lyiiiiiiiiiiiii^ 


gSSTofPfifS^ 


<^. 


^iOGICALSy^ 


JR  163  .L7  1902 

.indsay,  Thomas  M.  184  3- 

1914.  .  ^ 

^he  church  and  the  ministry 

in  the  early_centuries^ 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE 
MINISTRY     IN     THE 
EARLY  CENTURIES  *^  >^  The 

Eighteenth  Series  of  the  Cunningham 
Lectures  By  THOMAS  M.  LINDSAY,  D.D., 
Principal  of  the  Glasgow  College  of  the  United 
Free  Church  of  Scotland 


NEW  YORK  A.  C.  ARM 
STRONG  AND  SON  ^  3 
AND  5  WEST  EIGHTEENTH 
STREET  ^  LONDON 
HODDER  &  STOUGHTON 
1902 


'tttUr  and  Tanner.  The  Selwood  Printing  IVotks,  Frcme..  and  London 


TO 

THE    REV.   GEORGE   C.    M.    DOUGLAS,  D.D. 


Prefi 


ace 


''  I  ""HE  aim  of  these  Lectures  is_to_jourtray  the  organized  life 
of  the  Christian  Society  as  that  was  lived  in  the  thousands 
of  little  communities  formed  by  the  proclamation  of  the  Gospel  , 
of  our  Lord  during  the  first  three  centuries. 
)  The  method  of  description  has  been  to  select  writings  which 
seemed  to  reveal  that  life  most  clearly,  and  to  group  round  the 
central  sources  of  information  illustrative  evidence,  contemporary 
or  other.     The  principle  of  selection  has  been  to  take,  as  the  cen- 
tral authorities,  those  writings  which,  when  carefully  examined, 
reveal  the  greatest  number  of  details.     Thus,  the  Epistles  of  St. 
Paul,  especially  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  have  been 
chosen  as  furnishing  the  greatest  number  of  facts  going  to  form 
a  picture  of  the  Ufe  of  the  Christian  Society  during  the  first 
century,   and  the  material  derived  from  the  other  canonical 
writings  such  as  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  the  Apocalypse  and 
the  Pastoral  Epistles,  have  been  arranged  around  them.     Simi- 
larly the  Didache,  the  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons  and  the 
Epistles  of  Ignatius  have  been  selected  for  the  light  they  throw 
on  the  life  and  work  of  the  Church  during  the  second  century. 
The  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  supplemented  by  the  writings  of 
Irenaeus  and  of  Tertullian,  have  furnished  the  basis  for  the  de- 
scription of  the  organization  during  the  first,  and  the  Epistles  of 
Cyprian  of  Carthage  for  that  of  the  second  half  of  the  third  cen- 
tury. 

vi  6 


viii  PREFACE 

The  method  used  has  the  disadvantage  of  making  necessary- 
some  repetitions,  which  the  form  of  Lectures  rendered  the  more 
inevitable  ;  but  it  puts  the  reader  in  possession  of  the  contem- 
porary evidence  in  the  simplest  way. 

Quotations  from  the  original  authorities  have  been  given  in 
English  for  the  most  part,  and,  as  a  rule,  the  translations  have 
been  taken  from  well  known  versions — from  the  Ant^Nicene 
Library,  from  the  late  Bishop  Lightfoot's  translations  of  Clement 
of  Rome  and  of  Ignatius,  and  from  Messrs.  Hitchcock  and 
Brown's  version  of  the  Didache.  This  has  been  done  after  con- 
sultation with  friends  whose  advice  seemed  to  be  too  valuable  to 
be  neglected. 

Dr.  Moberly,  in  his  eminently  suggestive  book,  Ministerial 

Priesthood,  has  warned  all  students  of  early  Church  History  to 

beware  of  mental  presuppositions,  unchallenged  assumptions, 

hypotheses  or  postulates.     The  warning  has  been  taken  with  all 

seriousness,  even  when  the  perusal  of  his  book  has  suggested 

the  thought  that  mental  presuppositions,  like  sins,  are  more 

readily  recognized  in  our  neighbours  than  in  ourselves,     I  feel 

bound  to  admit  that  three  assumptions  or  postulates  may  be 

found  underlying  these  lectures.     Whether  they  are  right  or 

wrong  the  reader  must  judge. 

I     My  first  postulate  is  this.     I  devoutly  believe  that  there  is  a 

I  Visible  Catholic  Church  of  Christ  consisting  of  all  those  through- 

lout  the  world  who  visibly  worship  the  same  God  and  Father, 

I  profess  their  faith  in  the  same  Saviour,  and  are  taught  by  the 

I  same  Holy  Spirit ;    but  I  do  not  see  any  Scriptural  or  even 

I  primitive  warrant  for  insisting  that  catholicity  must  find  visible 

I  expression  in  a  uniformity  of  organization,  of  ritual  of  worship, 

'or  even  of  formulated  creed.     This  visible   Church  CathoUc  of 

Christ  has  had  a  life  in  the  world  historically  continuous  ;    but 


PREFACE  ix 

the  ground  of  this  historical  continuity  does  not  necessarily 
exist  in  any  one  method  of  selecting  and  setting  apart  office- 
bearers who  rule  in  the  Church  ;  its  basis  is  the  real  succession 
of  the  generations  of  faithful  followers  of  their  Lord  and  Master, 
Jesus  Christ.  It  is  with  devout  thankfulness  that  I  can  make  this 
assumption  with  perfect  honesty  of  heart  and  of  head,  because 
it  relieves  me  from  the  necessity — sad,  stern  and  even  hateful 
it  must  seem  to  many  pious  souls  who  feel  themselves  under  its 
power — of  unchurching  and  of  excluding  from  the  "  covenanted  " 
mercies  of  God,  all  who  do  not  accept  that  form  of  Church 
government  which,  to  my  mind,  is  truest  to  scriptural  principles 
and  most  akin  to  the  ecclesiastical  organization  of  the  early 
centuries. 

'.     My  second  postulate  concerns  the  ministry.     There  is  and 
tmust  be  a  valid  ministry  of  some  sort  in  the  churches  which  are 

fbranches  of  this  one  Visible  Catholic  Church  of  Christ ;    but  I 
j 

jdo  not  think  that  the  fact  that  the  Church  possesses  an  authority 
[which  is  a  direct  gift  from  God  necessarily  means  that  the  autho- 
|rity  must  exist  in  a  class  or  caste  of  superior  office-bearers  en- 
dowed with  a  grace  and  therefore  with  a  power  "specific,  exclusive 
and  efficient,"  and  that  it  cannot  be  delegated  to  the  ministry 
by  the  Christian  people.  I  do  not  see  why  the  thought  that 
the  authority  comes  from  "  above,"  a  dogmatic  truth,  need  in  any 
/way  interfere  with  the  conception  that  all  official  ecclesiastical 
power  is  representative  and  delegated  to  the  officials  by  the 
membership  and  that  it  has  its  divine  source  in  the  presence  of 
Christ  promised  and  bestowed  upon  His  people  and  diffused 
through  the  membership  of  the  Churches.  Therefore  when  the 
question  is  put :  "  Must  ministerial  character  be  in  all  cases 
conferred  from  above,  or  may  it  sometimes,  and  with  equal 
validity,  be  evolved  from  below  ?  "  it  appears  to  me  that  a  fallacy 


X  PREFACE 

lurks  in  the  antithesis.  "From below"  is  used  in  the  sense 
"  from  the  membership  of  the  Church,"  and  the  inference 
suggested  by  the  contrast  is  that  what  comes  "  from  below," 
i.e.  from  the  membership  of  the  Church,  cannot  come  "  from 
above,"  i.e.  cannot  be  of  divine  origin,  warrant  and 
authority.  Why  not  ?  May  the  Holy  Spirit  not  use  the 
membership  of  the  Church  as  His  instrument  ?  Is  there  no 
real  abiding  presence  of  Christ  among  His  people  ?  Is  not 
this  promised  Presence  something  which  belongs  to  the  sphere 
of  God  and  may  it  not  be  the  source  of  an  authority  which  is 
"  from  above  "  ?  The  fallacious  antithesis  has  apparently 
given  birth  to  a  formula, — that  no  valid  ministry  can  be  evolved 
from  the  membership  of  the  Christian  congregation  ;  and  this 
formula  has  been  treated  as  expressing  a  dogmatic  truth  which  has 
been  compared  with  the  truth  of  the  dogma  of  the  Incarnation, 
and  which  has  been  used  as  a  guiding  principle  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  references  in  the  New  Testament  writings  and  in 
other  early  Christian  literature  to  the  origin  and  growth  of  the 
Christian  ministry.  Fortified  by  this  supposed  dogmatic  truth 
one  Anglican  divine  can  contentedly  rest  the  Scriptural  warrant 
for  the  theory  of  "  Apostolic  Succession  "  and  all  the  sad  and 
stern  practical  consequences  he  deduces  from  it,  on  an  hypo- 
thesis and  on  a  detail  in  a  parable,  and  another  can  find  evidence 
for  the  same  "  gigantic  figment "  in  a  statement  of  Clement  of 
Kome  which  describes  the  earliest  missionaries  of  the  Christian 
Church  doing  what  missionaries  of  all  kinds,  from  those  of  the 
Chm'ch  of  England  to  those  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  have  done 
in  all  generations  to  secure  the  well-being  and  continuance  of  the 
communities  of  believers  who  have  been  converted  to  the  faith 
of  Jesus. 

Mj  third  postulate  belongs  to  an  entirely  different  sphere  from 


i 


PEEFACE  xi 

the  two  already  mentioned,  but  it  has  been  so  much  in  my  mind 
that  it  ought  to  be  mentioned.  It  is  that  analogies  in  organiza- 
tion illustrative  of  the  life  of  the  primitive  Christian  communities 
can  be  more  easily  and  more  safely  found  on  the  mission  fields  v 
pi  our  common  Christianity  than  among  the  details  of  the  or- 
l^anized  life  of  the  long  established  Churches  of  Christian  Europe. 
In  the  early  centuries  and  on  the  Mission  field  we  are  studying 
origins.  It  was  my  good  fortune  some  years  ago  to  spend  twelve 
months  in  India,  examining  there  the  methods,  work  and  results 
of  the  Missions  of  the  various  branches  of  the  Church  of  Christ. 
One  seemed  at  times  to  be  transported  back  to  the  early  centuries, 
to  hear  and  to  see  what  the  earliest  writers  had  recounted  and 
described.  Portions  of  the  Didache,  of  the  Sources  of  the  Apos- 
tolic Canons,  of  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus  were  living  practices 
there.  One  lived  among  scenes  described  by  Tertullian  and  by 
Clement  of  Alexandria.  The  Arabian  Nights  tell  us  of  the  for- 
tunate possessor  of  a  magic  carpet  who,  when  seated  on  his  trea- 
sure, had  only  to  wish  it  to  be  carried  anywhere  in  space  he  desired. 
Historians  might  long  to  be  owners  of  a  similar  mat  to  carry  them 
,  anywhen  backwards  and  forwards  throughout  the  past  centuries. 
j  A  visit  to  the  Mission  field,  especially  to  one  among  a  people  of 
ancient  civiUzation  who  have  inherited  those  original  specula- 
tions which  were  the  fertile  soil  out  of  which  sprang  the  earliest 
Christian  Gnosticism,  is  the  magic  carpet  which  transports  one 
back  to  the  times  of  primitive  Christianity.  The  visitor  sees  the 
simple  meaning  of  many  a  statement  which  seemed  so  hard  to 
understand  with  nothing  but  the  ancient  literary  record  to  guide 
him.  He  learns  to  distrust  some  of  the  hard  and  fast  canons  of 
modern  historical  criticism,  and  to  grow  somewhat  sceptical 
about  the  worth  of  many  of  those  "  subjective  pictures  "  which 
some  modern  critics  first  construct  and  then  use  to  estimate  the 


xii  PEEFACE 

date,  authorship  and  intention  of  ancient  documents.  He  learns 
that  the  modern  western  mind  cannot  so  easily  gauge  the  oriental 
ways  of  thought  as  it  persistently  imagines.  Modern  missionary 
work  appears  to  me  to  be  full  of  helpful  illustrations  of  the  life 
and  organization  of  the  early  centuries. 

These  Lectures  are  the  fruit  of  long,  careful,  and,  I  trust, 
reverent  study  of  the  literary  remains  of  the  early  Christian 
centuries.  The  last  quarter  of  a  century  has  brought  many 
ancient  documents  to  light  which  were  formerly  unknown,  and 
these  have  not  been  passed  over.  The  extent  of  my  obligations 
to  others  may  be  seen  in  the  notes  ;  but  the  debt  owed  to  such 
writers  as  Bishop  Lightfoot,  Professor  Harnack  and  Dr.  Hort 
far  exceeds  what  can  be  acknowledged  in  such  a  way. 

I  have  to  express  my  sense  of  the  great  assistance  given  to 
me  by  my  old  friend,  the  Rev.  A.  0.  Johnston,  D.D.,  who  read 
the  lectures  in  MS.,  and  who  has  also  gone  over  the  proofs  with 
great  care.  The  book  owes  much  to  his  labour  and  to  his  criti- 
cisms. 


EXTRACT  DECLARATION  OF  TRUST. 
March  1,  1862. 

I,  William  Binny  Webster,  late  Surgeon  in  the  H.E.I.C.S.,  presently 
residing  in  Edinburgh, — Considering  that  I  feel  deeply  interested  in  the 
success  of  the  Free  Church  College,  Edinburgh,  and  am  desirous  of  advanc- 
ing the  Theological  Literature  of  Scotland,  and  for  this  end  to  establish 
a  Lectureship  similar  to  those  of  a  Uke  kind  connected  with  the  Church 
of  England  and  the  Congregational  body  in  England,  and  that  I  have  made 
over  to  the  General  Trustees  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  the  sum  of 
£2,000  sterling,  in  trust,  for  the  purpose  of  founding  a  Lectureship  in 
memory  of  the  late  Reverend  William  Cunningham,  D.D.,  Principal  of  the 
Free  Church  College,  Edinburgh,  and  Professor  of  Divinity  and  Cliurch 
History  therein,  and  under  the  following  conditions,  namely, — First,  The 
Lectureship  shall  bear  the  name,  and  be  called,  '  The  Cunningham  Lecture- 
ship.' Second,  The  Lecturer  shall  be  a  Mnister  or  Professor  of  the  Free 
Church  of  Scotland,  and  shall  hold  the  appointment  for  not  less  than  two 
years,  nor  more  than  three  years,  and  be  entitled  for  the  period  of  his  hold- 
ing the  appointment  to  the  income  of  the  endowment  as  declared  by  the 
General  Trustees,  it  being  understood  that  the  Council  after  referred  to 
may  occasionally  appoint  a  Minister  or  Professor  from  other  denomina- 
tions, provided  this  be  approved  of  by  not  fewer  than  Eight  Members  of  the 
Council,  and  it  being  further  understood  that  the  Council  are  to  regulate 
the  terms  of  payment  of  the  Lecturer.  Third,  The  Lecturer  shall  be  at 
liberty  to  choose  his  own  subject  within  the  range  of  Apologetical,  Doc- 
trinal, Controversial,  Exegetical,  Pastoral,  or  Historical  Theology,  includ- 
ing what  bears  on  Missions,  Home  and  Foi'eign,  subject  to  the  consent  of 
the  Council.  Fourth,  The  Lecturer  shall  be  bound  to  deliver  pubUcly  at 
Edinburgh  a  Course  of  Lectures  on  the  subjects  thus  chosen  at  some  time 
immediately  preceding  the  expiry  of  his  appointment,  and  during  the 
Session  of  the  New  College,  Edinburgh  ;  the  Lectures  to  be  not  fewer  than 
six  in  number,  and  to  be  deUvered  in  presence  of  the  Professors  and  Stu- 
dents under  such  arrangements  as  the  Council  may  appoint ;  the  Lecturer 
shall  be  bound  also  to  print  and  pubUsh,  at  his  own  risk,  not  fewer  than 


xiv  EXTEACT  DECLAEATION  OF  TRUST 

750  copies  of  the  Lectures  within  a  year  after  their  delivery,  and  to  deposit 
three  copies  of  the  same  in  the  Library  of  the  New  College ;  the  form  of 
the  pubhcation  shall  be  regulated  by  the  Council.  Fifth,  A  Council  shall  be 
constituted,  consisting  of  (first)  Two  Members  of  their  own  body,  to  be 
chosen  annually  in  the  month  of  March,  by  the  Senatus  of  the  New  College, 
other  than  the  Principal ;  (second)  Five  Members  to  be  chosen  annually 
by  the  General  Assembly,  in  addition  to  the  Moderator  of  the  said  Free 
Church  of  Scotland ;  together  with  (third)  the  Principal  of  the  said  New 
College  for  the  time  being,  the  Moderator  of  the  said  General  Assembly 
for  the  time  being,  the  Procurator  or  Law  Adviser  of  the  Church,  and 
myself  the  said  William  Birmy  Webster,  or  such  person  as  I  may  nominate 
to  be  my  successor  :  the  Principal  of  the  said  College  to  be  Convener  of  the 
Council,  and  any  Five  Members  duly  convened  to  be  entitled  to  act  not- 
-vvithstanding  the  non-election  of  others.  Sixth,  The  duties  of  the  Council 
shall  be  the  following : — (first),  To  appoint  the  Lecturer  and  determine 
the  period  of  his  holding  the  appointment,  the  appointment  to  be  made 
before  the  close  of  the  Session  of  College  immediately  preceding  the  ter- 
mination of  the  previous  Lecturer's  engagement;  (second).  To  arrange 
details  as  to  the  delivery  of  the  Lectures,  and  to  take  charge  of  any  addi- 
tional income  and  expenditure  of  an  incidental  kind  that  may  be  connected 
therewith,  it  being  understood  that  the  obligation  upon  the  Lecturer  is 
simply  to  deUver  the  Course  of  Lectures  free  of  expense  to  himself.  Seventh, 
The  Council  shall  be  at  liberty,  on  the  expiry  of  five  years,  to  make  any 
alteration  that  experience  may  suggest  as  desirable  in  the  details  of  this 
plan,  provided  such  alterations  shall  be  approved  of  by  not  fewer  than 
Eisfht  Members  of  the  Council. 


Table  of  Contents 


LECTURE   I 

THE   NEW   TESTAMENT   CONCEPTION    OP   THE   CHURCH    OF 

CHRIST 

PAGE 

The  Promise  of  the  Church  (Ecclesia)     .  /\ 3 

JeAvish  and  Greek  Meanings  of  Ecclesia  .  ^ 4 

The  Word  has  its  Home  in  the  Pauline  Literature  ."^ 5 

It  includes  five  great  Thoughts 5 

i.  Fellowship  with  Christ  and  -with  the  Brethren     ./....  6-9 

St.  Paul  rings  the  changes  on  this  Thought    ^      .      .      .      .  7 

Fellowship  with  Christ  manifested  in  "  gifts  "  to  the  Church  ,     8 

Fellowship  among  Behevers  implied  in   the  early  Names 

for  Christians /  9 

ii.   Unity 10-15 

Church  and  Churches 10 

A 

The  Unity  of  the  Church  a  primary  Verity  of  the  Christian 

I                      Faith ./,    .  13 

iii.  The  Church  is  a  visible  Community 16-24 

It  can  be  seen  in  every  Christian  Community  large  or  small 

for  it  is  an  ideal  Reality 16 

This  Ideal  ought  to  be  made  manifest  .  .  .  .  •.  .  .  18 
St.  Paul's  way  of  manifesting  the  Unity  of  the  Church  of 

Christ /^      .  20 

His  leading  thought  was  "  fellowship  "  [KOLvutvCa) .      ./\  .      .  20 

How  he  grouped  his  Churches  .      .  i 21 

The  great  "  Collection "       .     .    /I 22 

The  Methods  of  the  Twelve 23 

XV 


xvi  TABLE   OF   CONTENTS 

PAGE 

iv.  The  Church  has  Authority 24-33 

The  Promise  of  Authority  made  to  St.  Peter,  to  the  Twelve 
and  to  the  whole  Company  of  the  Believers       .  .^  .      .      .       25 

How  these  Promises  were  interpreted  by  the  primitive 
Church T 32 

The  Self-government  and  Independence  of  the  ApostoUc 
Churches 32 

V.  The  Church  is  a  Sacerdotal  Society 33-37 

The  ideal  Israel 33 

The  sacerdotal  Cliaracter  belongs  to  the  whole  Membership  34 
Luther  on  the  sacerdotal  Character  of  the  Church  ...  35 
No  Idea  of  a  maimed  Sacerdotalism  in  primitive  Times  .      .       36 


LECTURE   II 

A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC  TIMES 

The  local  Churches  in  primitive  Times  met  in  private  Houses.      .      .  41 

Tlie  Brethren  had  three  Kinds  of  Meetings   .      .      .      .  ,  .      .      .      .  43 

i.  The  Meeting  for  Edification     .      .      .     ^ 44 

The  Service  and  the  Arrangement  of  the  Parts     .  ^  .      .      .  44 

Almost  unlimited  Freedom  in  Worship      ..>...  49 

ii.  The  Meeting  for  Thanksgiving  (Eucharistia) 50 

The  Details  indistinctly  given 50 

May  be  reconstructed 52 

iii.  The  Congregational  Business  Meeting 54 

It  was  the  Centre  of  the  Unity  and  the  Seat  of  the  In- 
dependence of  the  local  Church  ,...-...,  55 
It  settled  even  the  civil  Disputes  among  the  Brethren     .      .  55     fl 
Every  local  Church  was  a  little  self-governing  RepubUc      .  57      j 
Leadership  within    the    Christian   Communities  had   a   Distinctive 
Character,    and  implied    Service    and  the  possession  of 

"Gifts" 62 

Traces  of  a  double  Ministry,  the  prophetic  and  the  local  .      .  -    .      .  64 
These   Ministries    quite   separate,   but  the  Men    composing    them 

might  belong  to  both 06 


TABLE    OF   CONTENTS  xvii 

LECTURE   III 
THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY  OF  THE  PRIMITIVE  CHURCH 

PAGE 

The  Christian  Community  is  a  Body  of  which  the  Spirit  of  Christ 

is  the  Soul 69 

Tlae  "  Gift  "  to  "  speak  the  Word  of  God  "  the  most  prized  ...  70 
Its  Complement  was  the  "  Gift "  to  "  discern  "  or  test  those  who 

"  spoke  the  Word  of  God  " y^    .      .      .       70 

The    prophetic   ]\Iinistry   was   three-fold,   Apostles,   Prophets   and 

Teachers 73 

This  three-fold  Ministry  is  to  be  traced  throughout  the  Church  of 

the  first  and  second  Centuries 74 

i.  Apostles  were  the  Missionaries  who  founded  the  Churches.       75 

Various  Classes  of  Apostles .     .  A 76 

Their  Number  increased  during  tlie  earlier  Decades  .  .^  .  82 
The  ■wider  and  narrower  uses  of  the  Word  "  Apostle  "  .  ,;  .  85 
The  special  Character  of  Apostolic  Work  and  Authority  .  87 
St.  Paul  as  the  Type  of  an  Apostle 88 

ii.  Prophets    were    found    in  every  Christian  Community,  and 

sometimes  wandered  from  one  to  another.      .      ./    .      .       90 

Wliat  Prophecy  was i      .      .       93 

Prophecy  and  Ecstasy 94 

Prophecy  and  visions 94 

Prophets  were  not  Office-bearers 95 

They  exercised  a  great  deal  of  influence  in  matters  of 
discipUne,  and  had  a  unique  place  in  the  restoration  of 

the  lapsed 96 

Wandering  Prophets  and  the  Firstfruits 97 

.Their  Claims  were  to  be  tested  by  the  "  Gift "  of  Discern- 
ment       99 

False  Prophets 100 

iii.  Teachers,  their  special  Work 103 

The  Prophets  of  the  Old  and  of  the  New  Testaments  compared,  a.  106 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS 


LECTURE   IV 

THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  FIRST  CENTURY— CREATING  ITS 

MINISTRY 

PAGE 

Traces  of  several  Types  of  Organization  in  the  New  Testament 

Churches 113 

The  Seven  of  Acts  vi.  and  the  Jewish  Village  Community .      .      .      .  115 

Elders  in  Churches  outside  Palestine 118 

The  Supremacy  of  James  in  Jerusalem,  and  a  Series  of  Rulers  who 

were  of  the  Kindred  of  Jesus / 119 

Office-bearers  in  the  PauUne  Gentile  Churches   .      .^ 121 

The  ProJiistamenoi  and  the  Relation  of  Patron  and  CUent ....  123 

The  heathen  Confraternities  and  their  Organization     .      .   "  .      .      .  125 

The  Jemsh  Synagogues  outside  Palestine  and  their  Organization .      .  129 
The  Christian  Churches  did  not  copy  either  the  Synagogue  or  the 

Confraternities 131 

They  had  an  external  Resemblance  to  both  Synagogue  and  Con- 
fraternity   . 132 

The  Organization  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles.      ./ 137 

The  Information  given  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles  is  complementary  to 

what  is  to  be  foimd  in  the  earlier  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  .  ^.      .      .  148 

Names  for  Office-bearers  in  early  Christian  Literature  .      ./^   .      .      .  152 
Episcopus  designates  the  Kind  of  Work  done  and  is  not  the  Name 

of  an  Office 153 

The  Meaning  and  Origin  of  the  Christian  "  Elders  " (153)) 

The  Churches  in  the  first  Century  were  ruled  by  a  College  of  Pres- 
byter-bishops who  were  assisted  by  a  Body  of  Deacons    .      .      .  154 
The  Unity  of  the  Church  never  forgotten  in  the  Independence  of 

the  local  Churches 1 55 

Note  on  "  Presbyter  "  and  "  Bishop  "• 
Harnack's  Theory  that  Bishops  were  distinct  from  Presbyters  from 

the  first ,! 157 

The  Witness  of  Clement 159 

The  Identity  of  the  New  Testament  "  Presbyters  "-  and  "  Bishops  ','  163 


TABLE    OF   CONTENTS 


LECTURE    V 


THE  CHURCHES  OF  THE  SECOND  AND  THIRD  CENTURIES- 
CHANGING    THEIR    MINISTRY 


PAGE 

The  Ministry  of  the  first  Century  was  changed  during  the  second      .  169 

The  Ministry  in  the  DidachS 171 

The   Congregational  Meeting  .    /i 173 

The  Prophetic  Ministry.      .      .  A 174 

Elected  Office-bearers     ..." 175 

The  Ministry  in  the  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons 177 

The  smallest  Christian  Communities  to  be  organized  under 

Bishop  or  Pastor,  Elders  and  Deacons  .  ^.     .      .      .  178 

A  Ministry  of  Women '.     ,      .      .  181 

The  Reader  and  uneducated  Bishops  .      .      .   ^.     .     .     .  182 
The  Document  shows  a  three-fold  Ministry  in  a  transitional 

Stage /  ....  183 

The  Letters  of  Ignatius /'....  186 

Their  Characters  and  Contents       .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .  187 

They  plead  for  U^iity  through    Obedience   to  the  Office- 
bearers          •      .  190 

The    Organization    they    bear    Witness  to :    a  Bishop,  a 
Session  of  Elders  and  a  Body  of  Deacons,  which  form 

one  whole 1 96 

(               They  reveal  a  three-fold  Ministry  but  not  Episcopacy  .      .  198 

The  Authority  of  the  Bishop  or  Pastor  Umited    ....  198 

The  Powers  of  the  Congregational  Meeting     .      .      .      .'     .  200 
/  An  unpaid  Ministry  explains  how  the  smallest  Body  of  Christians  could 

have  a  complete  Organization 200 

The  Organization  of  Bishop,  Session  of  Elders  and  body  of  Deacons 

i           became  almost  luiiversal  within  the  Empire 204 

The  Reasons  for  the  Change  from  a  two-fold  collegiate  Ministry  to 
a  three-fold    Ministry  and  the  Paths  by  which    the    Change 

advanced  can  only  be  guessed 205 

The  Church  has  always  the  Power  to  change  its  Ministry   ....  210 


XX  TABLE    OF   CONTENTS 

LECTURE    VI 

THE  FALL  OF  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY  AND  THE 
CONSERVATIVE    REVOLT 

PAGE 

^      The  Work  of  Edification  began  to  pass  from  the  prophetic  Ministry 

to  the  ordinary  Office-bearers 213 

The  Causes  which  led  to  the  Fall  of  the  prophetic  Ministry  are  not 

specifically  known  but  may  be  guessed 217 

The  Need  to  make  a  combined  Stand  against  Heresies      .      .      .      .  217 

The  Gnostic  Treatment  of  Christianity 218 

Marcion's  Canon,  Creed,  and  Churches 219 

Irenaeus  voiced  the  Need  which  his  Time  felt 221 

The  Guarantee  for  Christian  Truth  is  to  be  found  in  the  Succession 

of  Office-bearers  in  the  Churches  from  the  Times  of  the  Apostles  223 

Office-bearers  were  supposed  to  have  a  clmrisnia  veritatis.      .      .      .  227 

Effect  of  this  on  the  prophetic  Ministry 228 

>  The  Growth  of  a  Desire  to  come  to  some  Accommodation  with  the 

Empire 229 

The  Apologists 230 

The  Deterioration  of  Prophecy 233 

Protests  against  the  silent  Movement  in  the  Church 235 

The  Phrygian  Movement  the  Centre  and  Exaggeration  of  what  Avas 

affecting  the  whole  of  the  Churches 23G 

Montanism  properly  speaking  was  conservative 238 

Proof  from  Montanist  Prophecy 239 

The  Break  with  the  "  great "  Church 243 

The  Fate  of  the  later  Montanists 243 

The  Organization  of  the  Churches  after  the  Montanists  were  outside  24'^c 

What  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus  tell  us 245 

;>   A  three-fold  Ministry  of  Bishop,  Elders,  and  Deacons 245j 

QuaUfications,  Choice   and  Ordination  (which   might  be   done   by  I 

an  Elder)  of  Bishops 246^ 

Elders   and    Bishops   were  theoretically  equal  but  practically  very       _     i 

distinct 24'^ 

The  two  Meetings  for  public  Worship 260 

The  Meeting  for  Exhortation 251    ' 

The  Eucharistic  Service 252 

The  Distribution  of  the  Offerings 255 

Comparison  between  the  Organization  of  the  Churches  in  the  Be- 
ginning of  the  third  Century  and  those  of  modern  Times.      .      .  259 


TABLE   OF    CONTENTS  xxi 

LECTURE    VII 
MINISTRY    CHANGING    TO    PRIESTHOOD 

PAGE 

In  the  Course  of  the  third  Century  the  Conceptions  of  the  local  and 

of  the  universal  Church  began  to  change 265 

■>  The  Changes  led  in  the  End  to  the  Idea  that  a  local  Church  was  a 
Body  of  Christians  obedient  to  their  Bishop   and  that  the  uni- 
versal Church  was  the  Federation  of  these  obedient  Communities     266 
The  Phases  in  this  Change 266 

>  The  novel  Position  and  Autocracy  of  the  Bishop  needed  a  Sanction 

which  was  found  in  the  legal  Fiction  of  an  ApostoUc  Succession  278 
Tlie  Idea  first  emerged  in  the  Quarrels  between  Hippolytus  and 

Calixtus 280 

-^  The  Work  and  Influence  of  Cyprian 283 

The  Decian  Persecution 287 

The  Lapsed 290 

>  The  "  Authority  "  of  the  Martyr  confronts  the  "  Authority  "  of  the 

Bishop 295 

Cyprian's  Theory  of  the  Position  and  Power  of  the  Bishop      .      .      .     299 
The  Bishop  is  the  Representative  of  Christ  and  has  the  Right  to 

forgive  Sins 305 

Cyprian's  maimed  Sacerdotalism  :  the  Bishop  a  unique  Priest  and 

the  Eucharist  a  unique  Sacrifice 307 

Cyprian's    Method   of   exhibiting    the   universaUty   of    the    visible 

Church  by  Means  of  Councils 313 

His  Theory  confronted  by  a  Roman  one  which  was  in  the  End  tri- 
umphant in  the  West 317 


■[■ 


LECTURE    VIII 

HE   ROMAN  STATE   RELIGION   AND   ITS   EFFECTS    ON   THE 
ORGANIZATION    OF    THE    CHURCH 


The  Instrument  for  effecting  the  Grouping  of  federated  Churches 

round  the  definite  Centres  was  the  Comicil  or  Synod  ...      .323 
iSohm's  Theory  of  the  Origin  and  Meaning  of  Synods 327 


xxii  TABLE  OF   CONTENTS 

PAGE 

>  The  Synod  was  really  the  AppUcation  of  the  Congregational  Meeting 

to  a  wider  ecclesiastical  Sphere 334 

This   democratic    Principle   of  Organization   confronted   with   an 

imperiaUst  one  ;  the  two  subsisted  for  long  side  by  side  .  .  .  335 
Councils  became  a  regular  part  of  the  Organization  of  the  Churches 

before  the  End  of  the  third  Century 336 

The  same  Period  saw  other  Changes 337 

>  In  the  more  compact  Organization  of  the  federated  Churches  the 

Roman  Organization  for  the  State  pagan  Rehgion  was  largely 

copied 340 

The  reUgious  Reforms  of  Augustus 341 

The  Worship  of  the  Emperors 342 

The  Organization  of  the  Priesthood  of  the  imperial  Cult    ....  348 

This  Organization  copied  within  the  Christian  Churches   ....  350 

The  Churches  also  copied  the  State  Temple  Service 353 

The  Church  thus  organized  was  still  a  Federation  of  Churches     .      .  358 
Numerous  and  flourishing  Christian  Churches  existed  which  did  not 

belong  to  the  Federation 359 

After  the  Conversion  of  Constantine  these  outside  Christians  were 
vehemently  persecuted  by  the  State,  which  only  acknowledged  the 

federated  Churches 359 


APPENDIX 

Sketch  of  the  History  of  modern   Controversy   about  the   Office- 
bearers in  the  primitive  Christian  Churches 364 


WDEXE8 

Index  of  References  to  Contemporaiy  Authorities,  Canonical  and 

Non-canonical 379 

Index  of  Names  and  Subjects 386 


The  New  Testament  Conception 
of  the  Church 


CM. 


CHAPTER   1 

THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  CONCEPTION   OF  THE   CHURCH 

AND  I  say  also  unto  thee,  that  thou  art  Petros,  and  on  this 
petra  I  will  build  My  Church  (Ecclesia)  ;  and  the  gates 
of  Hades  shall  not  prevail  against  it."  '  Our  Lord  was  far  from 
GaUlee  and  farther  from  Jerusalem  when  He  uttered  these  words. 
He  was  sojourning  in  an  almost  wholly  pagan  land.  The  rocks 
overhanging  the  path  were  covered  with  the  mementos  of  a 
licentious  cult ;  and  in  the  neighbouring  city  of  Caesarea  Philippi 
Herod  Philip  had  built  and  consecrated  a  temple  to  the  Emperor 
Augustus,  who  was  there  worshipped  as  a  god.^    It  was  among 

'  Matt.  xvi.  18.  Some  modern  critics  (cf.  Schmiedel  in  the  Encyc.  Bill; 
p.  3105)  declare  that  this  passage  could  not  have  come  from  the  lips  of  our 
Lord  in  the  form  in  which  it  has  been  recorded,  and  in  particular  that  He 
could  not  have  used  the  word  "  ecclesia  "  ;  the  main  reason  given  being 
that  our  Lord  sought  to  reform  hearts  and  not  external  conditions.  To 
argue  from  that  statement,  however  true  it  may  be,  that  Jesus  had  no 
intention  of  founding  a  reUgious  community  and  could  not  have  used  the 
word  "■  church,"  seems  to  me  to  be  purely  subjective  and  therefore  untrust- 
worthy reasoning.  Besides,  the  use  of  the  word  by  St.  Paul  in  Gal.  i.  13, 
shows  that  St.  Paul  found  the  word  existing  within  Christian  circles  when 
he  embraced  the  new  faith  ;  and  to  find  it  in  common  use  at  so  early 
a  period  entitles  us,  in  my  judgment,  to  trace  it  back  to  Jesus  Himself. 
Tlie  trend  of  modern  criticism  has  been  to  place  St.  Paul's  conversion 
rauch  closer  to  the  crucifixion  than  it  was  formerly  held  to  be.  St.  Paul 
implies  that  the  words  of  the  eucharistic  formula  (Mk.  xiv.  22-2-4,  Matt, 
xxvi.  26-28)  came  from  Jesus  ;  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  every  one 
who  becomes  a  Christian  (himself  included)  must  be  baptized.  We  have 
thus,  quite  independently  of  the  Gospels  or  of  the  Acts,  "  church,". 
"  baptism,"-  "  the  eucharist  "—all  implying  a  reUgious  community,  all 
in  common  use  at  a  time  scarcely  two  years  after  the  death  of  our  Lord. 
That  entitles  us  to  attribute  them  to  Jesus  Himself. 

2  Compare  Josephus,  Antiq.  XV.  x.  3  ;   Bdh  Jud.  I;  xxi.  3.     See  also 

3 


4  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  CONCEPTION 

scenes  which  showed  the  lustful  passions  of  man's  corrupt  heart 
and  the  statecraft  of  Imperial  Rome  seating  themselves  on  the 
throne  of  God,  that  Jesus  made  to  His  followers  the  promise 
which  He  has  so  marvellously  fulfilled. 

The  v/ord  translated  Church  is  Ecdesia — a  word  that  had 
a  history  both  theocratic  and  democratic,  and  that,  came 
traihng  behind  it  memories  both  to  the  Jews  who  were  then 
listening  to  Him,  and  to  the  Greeks,  who,  at  a  later  period, 
received  His  Gospel.  To  the  Jew,  the  Ecdesia  had  been  the 
assembly  of  the  congregation  of  Israel,'  summoned  to  meet  at 
the  door  of  the  Tabernacle  of  Jehovah  by  men  blowing  silver 
trumpets.  To  the  Greek  the  Ecdesia  was  the  sovereign  assembly 
of  the  free  Greek  city-state,^  summoned  by  the  herald  blowing 
his  horn  through  the  streets  of  the  town.  To  the  followers  of 
Jesus  it  was  to  be  the  congregation  of  the  redeemed  and  there- 
fore of  the  free,  summoned  by  His  heralds  to  continually  appear 
in  the  presence  of  their  Lord,  who  was  always  to  be  in  the  midst 
of  them.     It  was  to  be  a  theocratic  democracy.  ^ 

Schiirer,  Geschichte  des  Jiidischen  V dikes  (1898,  3rd  ed.),  ii.  158  f.  ;  G.  A. 
Smith,  Historical  Geography  of  Palestine,  p.  473  £f.  ;  Wissowa,  Religion  vnd 
Kultus  der  Romer  (1902),  p.  284,  n.  3. 

»  Numbers  x.  2,  3.  In  the  Old  Testament  two  words  are  used  to  denote 
the  assembling  of  Israel,  qahal  and  'edah  ;  the  former  is  translated  "  as- 
sembly "  and  the  latter  "  congregation  "  in  the  Revised  Version.  In  the 
Septuagint  iKKk-qa-ia  is  almost  always  always  used  to  translate  qahal,  and 
cruvaywyr/  to  translate  'edah.  Both  Greek  words  appear  continually  in 
the  later  Hellenistic  Judaism,  and  it  is  difficult  to  distinguish  their  mean- 
ings ;  but  Schiirer  is  inclined  to  think  that  crwaycoyT)  means  the  assembly 
of  Israel  as  a  matter  of  fact ;  while  iicKXrjaLa  has  always  an  ideal  reference 
attached  to  it.  Compare  Schiirer,  Geschichte  des  Jiidischen  Yulkes  (3rd 
ed.  1898),  ii.  432,  n.  10  ;   Hort,  The  Christian  Ecdesia,  pp.  5-7. 

-  This  is  the  common  use  of  the  word  in  classical  Greek  ;  in  the  later 
Greek  the  word  denotes  any  popular  assembly,  even  a  disorderly  one  ; 
it  is  this  use  that  is  found  in  Acts  xix.  41.  Dio  Cassius  uses  the 
word  to  denote  the  Roman  comitia  or  ruling  popular  assembly  of  the 
sovereign  Roman  people.  The  ruUng  idea  in  the  word,  whether  in  clas- 
sical or  in  Hellenistic  Greek,  is  that  it  denotes  an  assembly  of  the  people, 
not  of  a  committee  or  council.  Against  this  view  compare  Hatch,  The 
Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches  (1881),  p.  30,  n.  11  ;  and  for 
a  criticism  of  Hatch,  see  Sohm,  Kirchenrecht  (1892),  i.  17,  n.  4. 


OF  THE  CHURCH  5 

The  New,  if  it  is  to  be  lasting,  must  always  have  its  roots  in 
the  Old ;  and  the  phrase  "  My  Ecclesia "  recalled  the  past 
and  foretold  the  future.  The  roots  were  the  memories  the  word 
brought  both  to  Jew  and  to  Greek  ;  and  the  promise  and  the 
potency  of  the  future  lay  in  the  word  "  My."  The  Ecclesia 
had  been  the  congregation  of  Jehovah ;  it  was  in  the  future; 
without  losing  anything  of  what  it  had  possessed,  to  become 
the  congregation  of  Jesus  the  Christ.  Its  heralds,  like  James, 
the  brother  of  our  Lord,  could  apply  to  it  the  Old  Testament 
promises,  and  see  in  its  construction  the  fulfilment  of  the  saying 
of  Amos  about  the  rebuilding  of  the  Tabernacle  of  David  ; ' 
or,  like  St.  Paul,  could  call  it  the  "  Israel  of  God,"  and  repeat 
concerning  it  the  prayer  of  the  Psalm,  "  Remember  thine  ecclesia, 
which  Thou  hast  purchased  of  old,  which  Thou  hast  redeemed 
to  be  the  tribe  of  Thine  inheritance."  "  It  had  been  the  self- 
governing  Greek  repubUc,  ruled  by  elected  office-bearers ; 
hereafter  the  communities  of  Christians,  which  were  to  be  the 
ecclesiae,  were  to  be  little  self-governing  societies  where  the 
individual  rights  and  responsibilities  of  the  members  would 
blend  harmoniously  with  the  common  good  of  all. 

The  word  with  its  memories  and  promises  appealed  to  none 
of  our  Lord's  "  Sent  Ones  "  more  strongly  than  to  St.  Paul, 
who  was  at  once  an  "  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews,"  and  the  apostle 
to  the  Gentiles.  The  term  "  ecclesia "  has  its  home  in  the 
Pauline  literature.^  It  is  met  with  110  times  within  the  New 
Testament,  and  of  these  86  occur  in  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  and 
in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  We  naturally  turn  to  the  writings 
of  St.  Paul  to  aid  us  in  expounding  the  thought  which  is  con- 
tained in  the  term.  When  we  do  so  we  are  entitled  to  say  that 
the  conception  contains  at  least  five  different  ideas  which  embody 
the  essential  features  of  the  "  Church  of  Christ." 

The  New  Testament  Church  is  fellowship  with  Jesus  and  with 

1  Acts  XV.  IG  ;    cf.  Amos  ix.  11. 

2  Gal.  vi.  16 ;    Acts  xx.  28 ;   cf.  Ps.  Ixxiv.  2. 

3  Weizsacker,  Jahrhucher  fiir  deiUsche  Theologie,  xviii.  481.- 


6  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 

the  brethren  through  Him  ;  this  fellowship  is  permeated  with 
a  sense  of  unity  ;  this  united  fellowship  is  to  manifest  itself  in 
a  visible  society  ;  this  visible  society  has  bestowed  upon  it  by 
our  Lord  a  divine  authority  ;  and  it  is  to  be  a  sacerdotal  society. 
These  appear  to  be  the  five  outstanding  elements  in  the  New 
Testament  conception  of  the  Church  of  Christ. 

1.  The  Church  of  Christ  is  a  fellowship.  It  is  a  fellowship 
with  Jesus  Christ ;  that  is  the  divine  element  in  it.  It 
is  a  fellowship  with  the  brethren ;  that  is  the  human 
element  in  it.  The  Rock  on  which  the  Church  was  to  be  built 
was  a  man  confessing — not  the  man  apart  from  his  confession, 
as  Romanists  insist,  nor  the  confession  apart  from  the  man, 
as  many  Protestants  argue.  It  was  a  man  in  whom  long  com- 
panionship with  Jesus  and  the  revelation  from  the  Father  had 
created  a  personal  trust  in  His  Messianic  mission ; '  and  the 
faith  which  had  grown  out  of  the  fellowship  had  the  mysterious 
power  of  making  the  fellowship  which  had  created  it  more  vivid 
and  real ;  for  faith,  in  its  primitive  sense  of  personal  trust,  is 
fellowship  become  self-conscious.  Faith  is  what  makes  fellow- 
ship know  itself  to  be  fellowship,  and  not  haphazard  social 
intercourse. 

The  faith  of  Peter,  seer  as  he  was  into  divine  mysteries,  and 
prophet  as  he  was,  able  to  utter  what  he  had  seen,  did  not  involve 
a  very  adequate  apprehension  of  the  fellowship  he  had  confessed. 
He  knew  so  little  about  its  real  meaning  that  shortly  after  his 
confession  he  made  a  suggestion  which  would  have  destroyed 
it ;  ^  a  thought  prompted  by  the  Evil  One  succeeded  the  revela- 

'  The  rock  on  which  the  Church  is  founded  is  "  a  human  character  ac- 
knowledging our  Lord's  divine  Sonship."  Gore,  The  Church  and  the 
Ministry,  3rd  ed.  p.  38.  "  In  virtue  of  this  personal  faith  vivifying  their 
discipleship,  the  Apostles  became  themselves  the  first  Uttle  Ecclesia,  con- 
stituting a  hving  rock  upon  which  a  far  larger  and  ever  enlarging  Ecclesia 
should  very  shortly  be  built  slowly  up,  hving  stone  by  living  stone,  as 
each  new  faithful  convert  was  added  to  the  society.'-  Hort,  The  Christian 
Ecclesia,  p.  17. 

2  Matt.  xvi.  22,  23.  The  suggestion  of  the  Evil  One  to  Peter,  and  pre- 
sented to  our  Lord  by  Peter — the  possibihty  of  Messiahship  without  suf- 


A  FELLOWSHIP  7 

tion  from  the  Father — so  strangely  and  swiftly  do  inspirations 
of  God  and  temptations  of  the  Devil  succeed  each  other  in  the 
minds  of  men.  The  sad  experience  of  Peter  has  been  shared 
by  the  Chm-ch  in  all  generations.  He  did  not  cease  to  be  the 
Rock-Man  in  consequence ;  nor  has  the  promise  failed  the 
Church  which  was  founded  on  him  and  on  his  confession,  al- 
though it  has  shared  his  weakness  and  sin. 

St.  Paul  rings  the  changes  on  this  thought  of  fellowship  with 
Jesus  which  makes  the  Church.  The  churches  addressed  in 
his  epistles  are  described  as  in  Christ  Jesus.  He  is  careful  to 
impress  on  believers  the  personal  relation  in  which  they  stand 
to  their  Lord,  even  when  he  is  addressing  the  whole  Church 
to  which  they  belong.  If  he  writes  to  the  Church  of  God  which 
is  in  Corinth,^  he  is  careful  to  add  "  to  them  that  are  sanctified 
in  Christ  Jesus,  called  to  be  saints  "  ;  and  in  his  other  epistles 
he  addresses  the  brethren  individually  as  "  saints,"  "  saints 
and  faithful  brethren,"  "  all  that  are  in  Rome,  beloved  of  God, 
called  to  be  saints."  ^  The  individual  believer  is  never  lost  in 
the  society,  and  he  is  never  alone  and  separate.  The  bond  of 
union  is  not  an  external  framework  impressed  from  without, 
but  a  sense  of  fellowship  springing  from  within.  The  be- 
liever's union  to  Christ,  which  is  the  deepest  of  all  personal 
things,  always  involves  something  social.  The  call  comes  to 
him  singly,  but  seldom  solitarily. 

fering — met  the  Saviour  at  the  great  moments  of  His  earthly  ministry  ; 
at  the  beginning,  in  the  Temptation  scene  ;  here,  when  he  had  the  vision 
and  gave  the  promise  of  the  Church  ;  at  the  end,  in  the  Garden  of  Geth- 
semane.  There  are  indications  in  the  Gospels  that  it  was  the  temptation 
never  absent  from  His  mind.  In  the  form  it  presents  itself  to  His  fol- 
lowers— the  possibiUty  of  saving  fellowship  with  Jesus  apart  from  trust 
on  a  suffering  Saviour — it  has  perhaps  also  been  the  crowning  temptation 
of  His  Church  and  followers.  If  our  Lord  alluded  to  this  special  temptation 
when  He  said  to  St.  Peter,  near  the  end,  "  Simon,  Simon,  behold  Satan 
asked  to  have  you  that  he  might  sift  you  as  wheat,"  as  is  most  Ukely  from 
His  references  to  His  own  temptations  and  to  St.  Peter's  relation  to  his 
brethren,  there  is  a  dehcate  suggestion  of  fellowship  softening  rebuke  and 
vivifying  the  promise  ;   Luke  xxii.  3L 

»  Cor.  i,-  2,  2  Phil.  i.  1  ;   Eph.  i.  1  ;   Col.  i.  2 ;   Rom.  i.  7. 


8       THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 

Perhaps,  however,  St.  Paul's  conception  of  the  fellowship 
with  Christ  which  is  the  basis  of  the  Church,  comes  out  most 
clearly  in  the  way  he  speaks  of  the  "  gifts  "  of  grace,  the  charis- 
mata, which  manifest  the  abiding  presence  of  our  Lord  in  His 
Church  and  His  continuing  fellowship  with  His  people/  He 
enumerates  them  over  and  over  again.  He  points  to  "  apostles," 
the  missionary  heralds  of  the  Gospel ;  to  "  prophets,"  to  whom 
the  Spirit  had  given  special  powers  for  the  edification  of  the 
brethren  ;  to  "  teachers,"  who  are  wise  with  the  wisdom  of 
God,  and  have  those  divine  intuitions  which  the  apostle  calls 
"  knowledge  "  ;  to  "  pastors,"  who  feed  the  flock  in  one  com- 
munity. He  speaks  of  "  helps "  {avriXi'i^ei^)  or  powers  to 
assist  the  sick,  the  tempted  and  the  tried  ;  of  "  insight "  to 
give  wise  counsels ;  of  gifts  of  rule  (Kv/Bepv/ia-ei^)  ;  of  gifts 
of  healing,  and  in  general  of  all  kinds  of  service.  They  are 
all  gifts  of  the  Spirit,  and  are  all  so  many  different  manifestations 
of  the  presence  of  Jesus  and  of  the  living  fellowship  which  His 
people  have  with  Him.^ 

These  various  gifts  are  bestowed  on  different  members  of 
the  Christian  society  for  the  edification  of  all,  and  they  serve 
to  show  that  it  is  one  organism,  where  the  whole  exists  for  the 
parts,  and  each  part  for  the  whole  and  for  all  the  other  parts. 
They  also  show  that  the  Christian  society  is  not  a  merely  natural 
organism  ;  there  is  divine  life  and  power  within  it,  because  it 
has  the  abiding  presence  of  Christ ;  and  the  proof  of  His  presence 
is  the  possession  and  use  of  these  various  "  gifts,"  all  of  which 
come  from  the  one  Spirit  of  Christ  in  fulfilment  of  the  promise 
that  He  will  never  leave  nor  forsake  His  Church.  Their  presence 
is  a  testimony  to  the  presence  of  the  Master  which  each  Chris- 
tian community  can  supply.  It  is  a  Church  of  Christ  if  His 
presence  is  manifested  by  these  fruits  of  the  Spirit  which  come 

I  1  Cor.  xii.  ;  Eph.  iv.  4-13  ;  Rom.  xii.  3-16.  It  is  imiJortant  to  notice 
that  St.  Paul,  in  Rom.  xii.  7,  makes  Sta/coi'iaa  "  gift  "  which  manifests  the 
presence  of  Christ,  and  that  this  word  is  used  to  mean  any  kind  of  "  minis- 
try "  within  the  Church.     See  below  p.  62.  ^  ggg  p   {53  n. 


A   TELLOWSHIP  9 

from  the  exercise  of  the  "  gifts  "  which  the  Spirit  has  bestowed 
upon  it ;  for  the  Church  as  well  as  the  individual  Christian  is 
to  be  known  by  its  fruits/    • 

This  sense  of  hidden  fellowship  with  its  Lord  was  the  secret 
of  the  Church.  It  was  a  bond  uniting  its  members  and  separa- 
ting them  from  outsiders  more  completely  than  were  the  initiated 
into  the  pagan  mysteries  sundered  from  those  who  had  not 
passed  through  the  same  introductory  rites.  While  Jesus  lived 
their  fellowship  with  Him  was  the  external  thing  which  dis- 
tinguished them  from  others.  They  were  His  disciples  {ixaOrfrai) 
gathered  round  a  centre,  a  Person  whom  they  called  Rabbi, 
Master,  Teacher — names  they  were  taught  not  to  give  to  another. 
They  shared  a  common  teaching  and  drank  in  the  same  words 
of  wisdom  from  the  same  lips  ;  but  even  then  they  could  not 
be  called  a  "  school,"  for  they  were  united  by  the  bond  of  a 
common  hope  and  a  common  future.  They  were  to  share  in 
the  coming  kingdom  of  God  in  and  through  their  relation  to 
their  Master.  After  His  departure  the  other  side  of  the  fellow- 
ship became  the  prominent  external  thing — their  relation  to 
each  other  because  of  their  relation  to  their  common  Lord. 
New  names  arose  to  express  the  change,  names  suggesting  the 
relation  in  which  they  stood  to  each  other.  They  were  the 
"  brethren,"  the  "  saints,"  and  they  had  a  fellowship  {Koivm'ia) 
with  each  other.^  This  thought  of  fellowship,  as  we  shall  see,  ^ 
was  the  ruling  idea  in  all  Christian  organization.  All  Christians 
wthin  one  community  were  to  hve  in  fellowship  with  each  other  ; 
different  Christian  communities  were  to  have  a  common  fellow- 
ship. Visible  fellowship  with  each  other,  the  outcome  of  the 
hidden  fellowship  with  Jesus,  was  to  be  at  once  the  leading 
characteristic  of  aU  Christians  and  the  bond  which  united  them 
to  each  other  and  separated  them  from  the  world  lying  outside. 

'  For  St.  Paul's  statement  about  the  "  gifts "  compare  Hort,  The 
Christian  Ecdesia,  pp.  153-70  ;  Heim-ici,  Da.s  Erste  Sendschreihen  des  Aposiel 
Paidus  an  die  Korinihier  {lS80),]p]).  347-463  ;  Kiihl,  Die  Gemeindeordnung 
in  den  Pastoralbriefen  (1885),  pp.  42-49. 

^  Weizsacker,  The  Apostolic  Age  (English  translation),  I.  p.  44  £F. 


10  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 

C?,:*  The  second  characteristic  of  the  Church  of  Christ  is  that 
it  is  a  Unity.  There  was  one  assembly  of  the  congregation  of 
Israel ;  one  sovereign  assembly  of  the  Greek  city-state.  There 
is  one  Church  of  Christ. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  word  Church  is  seldom  used  in 
the  New  Testament  to  designate  one  universal  and  compre- 
hensive society.  On  the  contrary,  out  of  the  110  times  in  which 
the  word  occurs,  no  less  than  100  do  not  contain  this  note  of  a 
wide-spreading  unity.  In  the  overwhelming  majority  of  cases 
the  word  "  church  "  denotes  a  local  Christian  society,  varying 
in  extent  from  all  the  Christian  congregations  within  a  province 
of  the  Empire  to  a  small  assembly  of  Christians  meeting  together 
in  the  house  of  one  of  the  brethren.  St.  Paul  alone,'  if  we  except 
the  one  instance  in  Matt,  xvi.,  uses  the  word  in  its  universal 
application ;  and  he  does  it  in  two  epistles  only — those  to  the 
Ephesians  and  to  the  Colossians — both  of  them  dating  from 
his  Roman  captivity.^  But  there  are  numberless  indications 
that  the  thought  of  the  unity  of  the  Church  of  Christ  was  never 

^  It  ought  to  be  noted,  however,  that  although  we  do  not  find  the  word 
"  ecclesia  "  in  1  Peter,  we  do  find  the  thought  of  the  unity  of  all  behevers 
strongly  expressed  in  a  variety  of  ways :  "  Ye  are  an  elect  race,  a  royal 
priesthood,  a  holy  nation,  a  people  for  God's  own  possession"  (1  Peter 
ii.  9)  ;  and  in  v.  17  we  have  the  word  "  brotherhood '-  used  to  bring  out 
the  same  idea.  This  word  in  the  early  centuries  was  technically  used  as 
synonymous  with  ecclesia.  See  below  p.  21.  The  double  meaning  of 
ecclesia  is  found  in  Matt.  xvi.  18  compared  with  Matt,  xviii.  17.  In  the 
Apocalypse  the  unity  is  expressed  in  the  phrase  "  the  Bride,  the  Lamb's 
wife,"  and  the  plurality  in  the  "  Seven  Churches  "  (Rev.  xxi.  9  ;  ii.  1,  etc). 

^  The  various  passages  in  which  the  word  "  ecclesia  "  occurs  in  the 
sense  of  the  Christian  society  have  often  been  collected  and  grouped. 
The  following  classification  is  based  on  that  of  Dr.  Hort. 

i.  The  word  "  ecclesia,"  in  the  singular  and  with  the  article,  is  used  to 
denote : — 

1.  The  original  Church  of  Jerusalem  and  Judea,  when  there  was  no 

other ;    Acts  v.  11  ;    viii.  1,  3  ;    Gal.  i.  13  ;    1  Cor.  xv.  9  ;   Phil, 
iii.  6. 

2.  The  sum  total  of  the    churches  in  Judea,  Samaria  and  GaUlee  ; 

Acts  ix.  31. 

3.  The  local    church  : — Jerusalem,  Acts    xi.  22 ;    xii.   1,5;    xv.  4. 

Thessalonica,  1  Thess.  i.  1 ;   2  Thess.  i,  1.     Corinth,  1  Cor.  i.  2 ; 


A   UNITY  11 

absent  from  the  mind  of  the  Apostle.  The  Christians  he  ad- 
dresses are  all  brethren,  all  saints,  whether  they  be  in  Jerusalem, 
Damascus,  Ephesus  or  Rome.  The  believers  in  Thessalonica 
are  praised  because  they  had  been  "  imitators  of  the  churches 
of  God  which  are  in  Judea,"  who  "  are  in  Jesus  Christ "  as  the 
Thessalonians  "  are  in  Jesus  Christ."  ^  The  Epistles  to  the 
Corinthians  are  full  of  exhortations  to  unity  within  the  local 

vi.  4  ;  xiv.  12,  23  ;  2  Cor.  i.  1 ;  Rom.  xvi.  23.  Cenchrea,  Rom; 
xvi.  1.  Laodicea,  Col.  iv.  16.  Antioch,  Acts  xiii.  1  ;  xv.  2. 
Each  of  the  Seven  Churches  of  Asia,  Rev.  ii.  iii.  Ephesus,  Acts 
xi.  26 ;    xiv.  27  ;    xx.  17 ;    1  Tim.  v.  16.     Caesar ea,  Acts  xviii; 

22.  Also  in  Jas.  v.  14  ;   3  John  9,  10. 

4.  The  assembly  of  a  local  church : — Acts  xv.  22  ;    1  Cor.  xiv.  23. 

5.  The  Hoiise  Church  : — at  Ephesus,  1  Cor.  xvi.  19  ;  at  Rome,  xvi.  5  ; 

at  Colosse,  Col.  iv.  15  ;   Philem.  2. 
ii.  The  word  "  ecclesia,"  in  the  singular  and  without  the  article,  is  used 
to  denote : — 

1.  Every  local  church  within  a  definite  district : — Acts  xiv.  23. 

2.  Any  or  every  local  Church  : — 1  Cor.  xiv.  4  ;   iv.  17  ;   Phil.  iv.  15  ; 

and  probably  1  Tim.  iii.  5,  15. 

3.  The  assembly  of   the  local  church : — 1  Cor.  xiv.  19,  35  ;    xi.  18 ; 

3  John  6. 
iii.  The  word  '*  ecclesia  "  in  the  plural  is  used  to  denote  : — 

1.  Tlie  sum  of  the  local  churches  within  a  definite  district,  the  name 

being  given  or  implied : — Judea,  1  Thess.  ii.  14 ;  Gal.  i.  22.- 
Oalatia,  1  Cor.  xvi.  1  ;  Gal.  i.  2.  Syria  and  Cilicia,  Acts  xv.  41. 
Derbe  and  Lystra,  Acts  xvi.  5.  Macedonia,  2  Cor.  viii.  1,  19, 
Asia,  1  Cor.  xvi.  19  ;  Rev.  i.  4,  11,  20  ;  ii.  7,  11,  17,  29  ;  iii.  6, 
13,  22  ;  xxii.  16. 

2.  An  indefinite  number  of  local  churches : — 2  Cor.  xi.  8,  28  ;    viii. 

23,  24  ;   Rom.  xvi.  4,  16. 

3.  The  sum  total  of  all  the  local  churches  : — 2  Thess.  i.  4  ;   1  Cor.  vii.: 

17  ;  xi.  16  ;  xiv.  33  ;  2  Cor.  xii.  13. 

4.  The  assemblies  of  all  the  local  churches : — 1  Cor.  xiv.  34. 
iv.  The  word  "  ecclesia  "  is  used  in  the  singular  to  denote  : — 

1.  The  one  universal  Church  as  represented  in  the  individual  local 

Church  : — ICor.  x.  32  ;  xi.  22;  (and  probably)  xii.  28  ;  Acts  xx? 
28  ;  (and  perhaps)  1  Tim.  iii.  5,  15. 

2.  The   one  universal  Church   absolutely: — Col.  i,  18,  24;    Eph.  i. 

22 ;   iii.  10,  21  ;   v.  23,  24,  25,  27,  29,  32. 
Compare  also  Bannerman,  The  Scripture  Doctrine  of  the  Church,  p.  571  flP.  ? 
Hort,  The  Christian  Ecclesia,  pp.  116-118" 
I  1  Thess.  ii.  14 ;   cf.  i.  1. 


12  THE  CONCEPTION  OF   THE   CHURCH 

church,  and  the  warnings  are  always  based  on  principles  which 
suggest  the  unity  of  the  whole  wide  fellowship  of  believers. 
The  divisions  in  the  church  at  Corinth  had  arisen  from  a  mis- 
guided apostolic  partizanship  which  implied  a  lack  of  belief 
in  Christian  unity  at  the  centre  ;  the  apostle  repudiates  this  by 
holding  forth  the  unity  of  Christ,  and  by  pointing  to  the  one 
Kingdom  of  God  to  be  inherited.'  He  has  the  same  message 
for  all  the  local  churches.  However  varied  in  environment 
they  may  be,  these  local  churches  have  common  usages,  and  ought 
to  unite  in  showing  a  common  sympathy  with  each  other.  ^ 

Besides  these  minor  indications  of  the  thought,  we  have, 
in  various  of  his  epistles  what  may  be  called  its  poetic  expres- 
sion. The  Church  of  Christ  is  such  a  unity  that  it  has  thrown 
down  all  the  walls  of  race,  sex,  and  social  usages  which  have  kept 
men  separate.^  It  has  reconciled  Jew  and  Gentile.  It  has 
bridged  the  gulf  between  the  past  of  Israel  and  the  present  of 
apostohc  Christianity.'* 

These  thoughts  and  phrases,  which  run  through  all  the  epistles 
of  St.  Paul,  lead  directly  to  the  description  of  the  glorious  unity 
of  the  one  Church  of  Christ  which  fills  the  great  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians.  Thus,  though  it  is  true  that  we  cannot  point  to  a 
single  use  of  the  word  "  church  "  in  the  earlier  epistles  which 
can  undoubtedly  be  said  to  mean  a  universal  Christian  society, 
the  thought  of  this  unity  of  all  believers  runs  through  them 
all.  The  conception  of  the  unity  of  the  Church  of  Christ  is 
one  of  the  abiding  possessions  of  St.  Paul  in  the  earliest  as  in 
the  latest  of  his  writings ;  but  it  is  only  in  the  writings  of  his 
Roman  captivity  that  it  attains  to  its  fullest  expression.^ 

'  1  Cor.  i.  12,  13  ;   vi.  9. 

2  1  Cor.  iv.  17  ;   vii.  17  ;   xi.  2,  23  ;   xvi.  1. 

3  Gal.  iii.  28.  *  Rom.  xi.  17. 

5  Professor  Ramsay  traces  a  growth  of  definiteness  in  St.  Paul's  use  of 
the  word  "  Church  "  from  its  application  to  a  single  congregation  to  its 
use  to  denote  what  he  calls  the  "  Unified  Church,"  and  ingeniously  con- 
nects the  use  in  each  case  with  poUtical  parallels.  Thus  the  phrase  "  the 
Church  of  the  Thessalonians  "  corresponds  in  civil  usage  to  the  ecclesia 


A   UNITY  13 

This  unity  of  the  Church  of  Christ  which  filled  the  mind  of 
St.  Paul  was  something  essentially  spiritual.  It  is  a  reality, 
but  a  reality  which  is  more  ideal  than  material.  It  can  never 
be  adequately  represented  in  a  merely  historical  way.  It  is 
true  that  we  can  trace  the  beginnings  of  the  formation  of  Chris- 
tian communities,  and  the  gradual  federation  of  these  Christian 
societies  into  a  wide-spreading  union  of  confederate  churches  ; 
but  that  only  faintly  expresses  the  thought  of  the  unity  of  the 
Church  of  Christ.  It  is  true  that  we  can  see  in  the  fellowship 
of  Christians  the  illustration  of  the  pregnant  philosophical 
thought  that  it  is  not  good  for  man  to  be  alone,  and  that  per- 
sonahty  itself  can  only  be  rightly  conceived  when  taken  along 
with  the  thought  of  fellowship.'  Apart,  however,  from  all 
surface  facts  and  philosophical  ideas,  there  is  something  deeper 
in  the  unity  of  the  Christian  Church,  something  which  lies  im- 
plicitly in  the  unformed  faith  of  every  believer,  that  in  personal 
union  with  Christ  there  is  union  with  the  whole  body  of  the 
redeemed,  and  that  man  is  never  alone  either  in  sin  or  in  salva- 


of  the  Greek  city-state,  while  the  phrase  "  the  Church  in  Corinth,"  sug- 
gesting as  it  does,  "  the  Church  "  in  other  places  as  well  as  in  Corinth, 
corresponds  in  civil  usage  to  a  universal  and  all-embracing  poUtical  or- 
ganization like  the  Roman  Empire.  Ramsay,  St.  Paul  the  Traveller,  pp. 
124-7.  Whether  this  be  true  or  not,  few  Avill  fail  to  find  a  coiuiexion  be- 
twen  the  wide  meaning  the  apostle  puts  into  the  word  "  Church  "  in  the 
Epistles  to  the  Ephesians  and  to  the  Colossians,  and  the  imperial  associa- 
tions of  the  city  from  which  he  wrote.  "  Writing  now  from  Rome,  he 
(St.  Paul)  could  not  have  divested  himself,  if  he  would,  of  a  sense  of  writing 
from  the  centre  of  all  earthly  human  affairs  ;  all  the  more  since  we  know 
from  the  narrative  in  Acts  xxii.  that  he  himself  was  a  Roman  citizen, 
and  apparently  proud  to  hold  this  place  in  the  Empire.  Here  then  he 
must  have  been  vividly  reminded  of  the  already  existing  unity  which 
comprehended  both  Jew  and  Gentile  under  the  bond  of  subjection  to  the 
emperor  at  Rome,  and  similarity  and  contrast  would  ahke  suggest  that  a 
truer  unity  bound  together  in  one  society  all  believers  in  the  crucified 
Lord."     Hort,  The  Christian  Ecdesia,  p.  143. 

J  "  Not  in  abstraction  or  isolation,  but  in  communion  Hes  the  very 
meaning  of  personaUty  itself,"  Moberly,  Ministerial  Priesthood,  p,  5. 
"  Fellowship  is  to  the  higher  Ufe  what  food  is  to  the  natural  Ufe — without 
it  every  power  flags  and  at  last  perishes,"  Hort,  Hidsean  Lectures,  p.  194. 

•J  ' 


14  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE   CHURCH 

tion.  The  unity  of  the  Church  of  Christ  is  a  primary  verity 
of  the  Christian  faith  :  "  There  is  One  Body,  and  One  Spirit, 
even  as  ye  are  called  in  one  hope  of  your  calling  ;  One  Lord, 
One  Faith,  One  Baptism,  One  God  and  Father  of  all,  Who  is 
over  all  and  through  all  and  in  all."  '  And  because  the  Unity 
of_the_Church  of  Christ  is  a  primary  verity  of  the  Christian 
faith,  it  can  never  be  adequately  represented  in  any  outward 
polity,  but  must  always  be,  in  the  first  instance  at  least,  a 
religious  experience.  Its  source  and  centre  can  never  be  an 
earthly  throne,  but  must  always  be  that  heavenly  place  where 
Jesus  sits  at  the  Right  Hand  of  God.^ 

This  enables  us  to  see  how  the  word  "  church  "  can  be  used, 
as  it  is  in  the  New  Testament,  to  denote  communities  of  varying 
size,  from  the  sum  total  of  all  the  Christian  communities  on  earth 
down  to  the  tiny  congregation  which  met  in  the  house  of  Phile- 
mon. For  the  unity  of  the  Christian  Church  is,  in  the  first 
instance,  the  oneness  of  an  ideal  reality,  and  is  not  confined 
within  the  bounds  of  space  and  time  as  merely  material  entities 
are.  It  can  be  present  in  many  places  at  the  same  time,  and  in 
such  a  way  that,  as  Ignatius  says,  "  Where  Jesus  Christ  is,  there 
is  the  whole  Church."  ^  The  congregation  at  Corinth  was,  in 
the  eyes  of  St.  Paul,  the  Body  of  Christ  or  the  whole  Church 
in  its  all-embracing  unity — not  a  Body  of  Christ,  for  there  is 
but  one  Body  of  Christ ;  not  part  of  the  Body  of  Christ,  for 
Christ  is  not  divided  ;  but  the  Body  of  Christ  in  its  unity  and 
filled  with  the  fulness  of  His  powers.'^  It  is  in  this  One  Body, 
present  in  every  Christian  society^  that  our  Lord  has  placed  His 

1  Eph.  iv.  4-6. 

2  This  thought  has  been  beautifully  expressed  by  Dr.  Sanday,  The  Con- 
ception of  Priesthood  (1898),  pp.  11-14.  3  To  the  Smyrnians,  8. 

4  Exegetes  differ  about  the  exact  translation  of  1  Cor.  xii.  27  :  v^utl? 
Si  iare  a-Cy/xa  Xpiarov.  A  few  (such  as  Godet)  translate  it :  "  a  body 
of  Christ  "  ;  by  far  the  largest  number  translate  :  "  the  Body  of  Christ  "  ; 
many  "  Christ's  Body,"  leaving  the  exact  thought  indeterminate.  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  exact  rendering,  a  or  the,  cannot  be  reached  from 
purely  grammatical  reasoning.  St.  Paul  is  completing  his  metaphor  or 
interpreting  his  parable.     He  has  been  emphasizing  the  fact  that  the 


A  UNITY  15 

"  gifts  ''  or  charismata,  which  enable  the  Church  to  perform 
its  divine  functions  ;  and  all  the  spiritual  actions  of  the  tiniest 
community,  such  as  the  Church  in  the  house  of  Nymphas — 
Prayer,  Praise,  Preaching,  Baptism,  the  Holy  Supper — are 
actions  of  the  whole  Church  of  Christ. 

The  Christians  of  the  early  centuries  clung  to  this  thought, 
and  we  have  a  long  series  of  writers,  from  Victor  of  Rome,' 
in  the  second  century,  down  to  Clement  of  Alexandria  and 
Origen,^  who  tells  us  that  the  whole  Church  of  the  redeemed, 
with  Christ  and  the  angels,  is  present  in  the  public  worship  of 
the  individual  congregation.  The  promise  of  the  Master,  that 
where  two  or  three  were  gathered  together  in  His  Name  there 
would  He  be  in  the  midst  of  them,  was  placed  side  by  side  with 
the  thought  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  that  believers  are 
surrounded  with  a  great  cloud  of  witnesses ;  and  the  combination 
suggested  that  in  the  simplest  action  of  the  smallest  Christian 
fellowship  there  was  the  presence  and  the  power  of  the  whole 
Church  of  Christ.  TertuUian  pushes  the  thought  to  its  furthest 
Umits  when  he  says  in  a  well-known  passage  :  "  Accordingly, 
where  there  is  no  joint  session  of  the  ecclesiastical  order,  you 
Offer,  Baptize,  and  are  Priest  alone  for  yourself ;  for  where 
three  are  there  the  Church  is,  although  they  be  laity."  ^ 


Christian  community  at  Corinth  is  an  organism  -with  a  variety  of  parts 
differing  in  structure  and  function.  It  is  a  perfect  organism  in  the  sense 
that  there  is  no  necessary  part  lacking  that  is  required  for  tlie  purpose 
the  oi'ganism  is  intended,  to  serve  for  its  suport  or  increase  or  for  work. 
The  Ufe  which  pervades  the  organism  in  its  totahty  and  in  every  minutest 
part  is  Christ  (Col.  Lii.  14).     The  organism  is  the  Body  of  Christ. 

'  "  Esto  potius  .  .  .  Christianus,  pecuniam  tuam  adsidente  Christo 
spectantibus  angeUs  et  martyris  praesentibus  super  mensam  dominicam 
sparge,'-  De  Aleatoribus,  11  ;  Harnack  und  v.  Gebhardt,  Texte  u.  U titer- 
suchungen,  V.  i.  29. 

^  Origen,  De  Or.  31  : —  "  Kat  ayyeXi/cwv  Swa/xcwv  i<f>L(TTafxevo}v  toIs 
aBpol.(Tfxa(TL  T(iiV  7rio"TeudvTo>v  Kat  avrov  tov  Kvpiov  koX  crcor^pos  rjfxSiV 
8vvd[X€0i<;  ^8r]  Se  /cat  TrvevfJLaTwv  dyLwv,  olfxai  Se,  ort  /cat  rrpoKeKOLfjirjfxevoiV 
cra<^es  Se,  ort  Kat  iv  tu  ^tw  nepLOVTutv,  ci  Kat  to  ttojs  ovk  cv^cpes   ciVeiJ'." 

3  TertuUian,  De  exhortatione  castitatis,  7  ;  compare  De  poenitentia,  10  ; 
De  pudicitia,  21 ;  De  fuga  in  persectUione,  14. 


16  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHUECH 

3.  The  Church  of  our  Lord's  promise  was  to  be  a  visible  com- 
munity. This  note  of  visibihty  is  suggested  by  the  word  ecclesia 
itself,  and  by  the  whole  environment  of  its  earliest  Christian 
use. 

The  "  congregation  of  Israel  "  and  the  "  sovereign  assembly  " 
of  the  Greek  city-state  had  been  visible  things.  The  time  of  the 
promise  suggested  a  visible  community.  It  came  when  the 
visible  people  of  Israel  had  manifestly  refused  to  accept  Jesus 
as  the  Messiah.  His  Church  was  set  over  against  the  Israel 
which  had  denied  Him — one  visible  community  against  another. 
The  earliest  uses  of  the  word  ecdesia  refer  unmistakably  to  visible 
communities.  When  St.  Paul  persecuted  the  "  Church  of  God," 
he  made  havoc  of  something  more  than  an  abstraction.  He 
haled  men  and  women  to  prison  and  confined  real  bodies 
within  real  stone  walls.  The  churches  spoken  of  in  the  Acts 
and  in  the  Epistles  were  societies  of  men  and  women,  living  in 
families,  coming  together  for  public  worship,  and  striving  in 
spite  of  many  infirmities  to  live  the  fife  of  new  obedience  to 
which  they  had  been  called.  They  were  little  societies  in  the 
world,  connected  with  it  on  all  sides  and  yet  not  of  it — lamps 
set  on  lamp-stands  to  enlighten  the  darkness  of  surrounding 
paganism.  The  "  gifts  "  of  the  Spirit,  which  manifested  the 
presence  of  Christ,  were  seen  at  work  in  the  public  assembly 
of  the  congregation,  and  were  given  to  edify  a  visible  society. 

The  two  universal  rites  of  the  new  society — Baptism  and  the 
Lord's  Supper — show  that  it  was  a  visible  thing.  St.  Paul 
makes  it  clear  that  entrance  into  the  Church  was  by  the  visible 
rite  of  Baptism,  and  that  he  himself  had  come  into  the  Church 
by  this  door.'  The  Lord's  Supper  was  a  visible  social  institution, 
and  could  only  occupy  the  place  it  did  in  a  visible  society.^ 

Even  the  Church  Universal,  which  is  described  in  the  Epistle 

to  the  Ephesians,  is  a  visible  Church.     It  is  an  ideal  reality ; 

but  an  ideal  Church  is  not  invisible  because  it  is  ideal.     It  can 

be  seen  in  any  Christian  community,  great  or  small ;  seen  in  a 

I  Rom.  vi.  3-8.;   Gal.  iii.  27.  ^  2  Cor.  xi.  23-27. 


A   VISIBLE  UNITY 

measure  by  the  eye  of  sense,  but  more  truly  by  the  eye  of  faith. 
For  it  is  one  of  the  privileges  of  faith,  when  strengthened  by 
hope  and  by  love,  to  see  the  glorious  ideal  in  the  somewhat  poor 
material  reality.  It  was  thus  that  St.  Paul  saw  the  universal 
Church  of  Christ  made  visible  in  the  Christian  community  of 
Corinth. 

St.  Paul  has  described  the  Church  in  that  great  trading  and 
manufacturing  city  of  Corinth,  where  the  rich  were  very  rich 
and  the  poor  were  very  poor ;  where  the  thoroughness  of  char- 
acter, inherited  from  the  early  Roman  colonists,  had  pushed 
the  sensuous  side  of  Greek  civilization  into  all  manner  of  ex- 
cesses, mitil  the  city  had  become  a  by-word  for  foul  living, 
and  religion  itself  had  become  an  incentive  to  lust.^  This  en- 
viromnent  had  tainted  the  Christian  society.  St.  Paul  saw  it 
all  and  has  described  it.  He  has  made  us  see  the  very  Love- 
feasts,  which  introduced  the  Holy  Supper,  changed  into  banquets 
of  display  on  the  part  of  the  rich,  while  the  poor  were  swept  into 
corners  or  compelled  to  wait  till  their  wealthier  brethren  were 
served.  He  has  shown  us  petty  rivalries  disguising  themselves 
under  the  mask  of  faithfulness  to  eminent  apostolic  teachers. 
He  has  depicted  the  tainted  morals  of  the  city  appearing  un- 
checked within  the  Christian  society.  What  a  picture  the 
heathen  satirist  Lucian,  with  his  keen  eye  and  his  outspoken 
tongue,  would  have  drawn  of  such  a  community  !  St.  Paul  saw 
all  the  frailty,  the  feebleness  to  resist  the  evil  communications 
and  the  fickleness  ;  and  yet  he  saw  in  that  community  the  Bodij 
of  Christ.  He  needed  the  love  that  "  beareth  all  things,  that 
believeth  all  things,  and  that  hopeth  all  things,"  to  make  his 
vision  clear — and  that  is  perhaps  the  reason  why  the  wonderful 
chapter  on  Christian  love  comes  in  the  middle  of  this  epistle  ; 
but  his  vision  was  clear,  and  he  saw  the  life  there  with  its  potency 
and  promise.  He  could  say  to  that  Church  Ye  are  tJie  Body 
of  Christ.     He  could  see  it,  as  he  saw  the  Ephesian  Church, 

'  Compare  Dobschiitz,  Die    Urchristlichen  Gemeinden,  Sittensgeschicht- 
liche  Bilder  (1902),  pp.  18  flf. 

CM.  2 


18  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 

becoming  gradually  rooted  and  grounded  in  love,  gradually 
strengthened  to  apprehend  with  all  saints  the  height,  the  depth, 
the  length  and  the  breadth  of  that  love  of  Christ  which  passeth 
knowledge,  and  at  last  filled  with  all  the  fulness  of  God. 

All  things  earthly  have  a  double  element,  whether  they  be 
of  good  or  evil  report.  They  are  in  the  present  and  they  are 
making  for  the  future.  They  are  what  they  are  to  be.  It  is 
the  same  with  all  things  belonging  to  Christianity  on  the  human 
side.  We  are  "  sons  of  God,"  and  yet  we  "  wait  for  the  adop- 
tion "  ;  we  are  redeemed,  and  yet  our  redemption  "  draweth 
nighy  Those  who  "  have  been  saved  "  arc  enjoined  to  "  work 
out  their  own  salvation."  So  it  is  with  the  Church  of  God. 
It  is  what  it  is  to  be.'  And  we  are  definitely  taught  by  the  very 
ways  in  which  St.  Paul  uses  the  word  "  Church  "  to  see  the 
Church  Universal  in  the  individual  Christian  community.^ 

It  will  be  admitted,  however,  that  ideals  are  given  us  to  be 
made  manifest  to  the  eye  of  sense  as  well  as  to  the  vision  of 
faith,  and  that  a  duty  is  laid  upon  every  Christian  and  upon 
every  Christian  society  to  make  the  universality  of  the  Church 
of  Christ  which  is  manifest  to  faith  plainly  apparent  to  the  eyes 
of  sense.     If  the  duty  has  been  but  scantily  performed  since  the,, 
beginning  of  the  third  century,  we   may  find   that  the  neglect   - 
has   come   from   abandoning   apostolic   methods   in   favour   oF 
others  suggested  by  the  great  pagan  empire  of  Rome.     The 
duty  of  trying  to  make  visible  to  the  senses  the  inherent  unity  ., 
of  the  Church  of  Christ  was  always  distinctly  present  to  the  mind 
of  the  great  apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  and  it  may  be  useful  to  see 
how  he  set  himself  to  the  task. 

One  thing  meets  us  at  the  outset.     He  would  not  for  the  sake 

^  Compare  Robertson,  Regniim  Dei,  p.  54  : — "  It  (the  kingdom  of 
Christ)  is  the  Kingdom  of  God  in  its  idea — in  potency  and  in  promise  : 
but  visibly  and  openly  not  yet.  This  is  St.  Paul's  well-known  paradox 
of  the  Christian  life.  Our  whole  task  as  Christians  is  to  become  what  \\6 
arc."' 

2  As  in  1  Cor.  x.  32  ;   xi.  22  ;   and  xii.  28  ;   cympare  above  p-  11.  note    , 
2,  §  iv.  1. 


A  VISIBLE  UNITY  19 

of  an  external  universality  agree  to  anything  which  would 
set  limits  on  the  real  universality  of  the  Church  of  Christ.  The 
preservation  of  the  liberty  with  which  Jesus  had  made  His 
people  free  was  of  more  importance  in  His  eyes  than  the  mani- 
festation of  the  visibility  of  the  universal  fellowship  of  Chris- 
tians with  each  other.  Jewish  believers  were  inclined  to  think 
that  the  practice  of  circumcision  "  embodied  the  principle 
of  the  historical  community  of  the  Church,"  '  and  that  no  one 
who  was  outside  the  circle  of  the  "  circumcised,"  no  matter 
how  strong  his  faith  nor  how  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  were  manifest 
in  his  Ufe  and  deeds,  could  plead  the  "  security  of  the  Divine 
Covenant."  For  this  they  could  give  reasons  stronger  than 
are  brought  forward  by  many  who,  in  our  own  day,  insist  on 
different  external  "  successions  "  as  marks  of  catholicity.  The 
Scripture  had  said  :  "  My  covenant  shall  be  in  your  flesh,  an 
everlasting  covenant."  '  The  Saviour  Himself  had  been  cir- 
cumcised on  the  eighth  day.  He  had  never,  in  so  many  words, 
either  publicly  to  the  people  or  privately  to  His  disciples,  de- 
clared that  circumcision  was  no  longer  to  be  the  sign  of  the 
covenant  of  God. 

St.  Paul  recognized  that  to  Umit  "  the  security  of  the  cove- 
nant "  to  something  defined  by  what  the  Jews  believed  to  be  the 
"principle  of  the  historical  continuity  of  the  Church,"  would  be 
4o  destroy  the  real  for  a  hmited,  though  more  sensibly  visible, 
universality.  He  bent  his  whole  energies  to  break  down  this 
false  principle  of  continuity  which  placed  the  "  succession  '' 
in  something  external,  and  not  in  the  possession  and  trans- 
mission from  generation  to  generation  of  the  "  gifts  "  of  the 
Spirit  within  the  commmiity.  This  done,  he  used  his  adminis- 
trative powers,  and  they  were  those  of  a  statesman,  to  create 

'  The  principle  which  underlies  the  claim  generally  associated  with  the 
ambiguous  phrase  "  apostolic  succession  "  is  so  curiously  like  the  demand 
made  by  "  those  of  the  sect  of  the  Pharisees  who  believed  "  in  the  days 
of  St.  Paul,  that  it  can  be  most  naturally  expressed  in  the  same  language 
if  only  a  "  succession  of  bishops  '  takes  the  place  of  "  circumcision." 

'  Gen,  xvii.  18; 


20  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 

channels  for  the  flow  of  the  manifestation  of  the  visible  unity  of 
the  Church  of  Christ. 

His  ruling  thought  was  to  provide  that  all  the  various  Christian 
communities  should  manifest  their  real  brotherhood  in  the 
cultivation  of  the  "  fruits  of  the  Spirit."  The  method  of  carving 
out  a  visibly  universal  Church  by  means  of  regulations  affecting 
organization  and  external  form  is  not  without  its  attractions, 
which  are  irresistible  to  minds  of  the  lawyer  type  and  training, 
such  as  we  see  afterwards  in  Cyprian  of  Carthage.  It  seems  a 
short  and  easy  method  of  showing  that  the  whole  Church  is 
visibly  one.  But  it  was  not  Paul's  method.  He  seems  to  have 
thought  as  little  about  the  special  "  construction  of  sheep- 
folds  "  as  his  Master.  What  concerned  him  was  that  the  sheep 
should  be  gathered  into  one  flock  around  the  One  Shepherd. 
He  nowhere  prescribed  a  universal  ecclesiastical  polity,  still 
less  did  he  teach  that  the  universality  of  the  Christian  brother- 
hood must  be  made  visible  in  this  way.  He  regarded  all  the 
separate  churches  of  Christ  as  independent  self-governing 
societies.  He  strove  to  implant  in  all  of  them  the  principle 
of  brotherly  dealing  with  one  another,  and  he  dug  channels 
in  which  the  streams  of  the  Spirit  might  flow  in  the  practical 
manifestation  of  Christian  fellowship. 

Fellowship  {koiviovlci),  word  and  thought,  is  what  filled 
his  mind.  All  the  brethren  within  one  Church  were  "to  have 
fellowship  with  each  other.  The  local  churches  within  a  de- 
finite region  were  to  be  in  close  fellowship.  The  churches 
among  the  Gentiles  were  to  maintain  brotherly  relations  with 
the  Mother-Church  in  Jerusalem.  What  this  fellowship  primarily 
meant  can  be  learnt  from  what  the  apostle  says  in  Gal.  ii.  P.' 
He  tells  us  that  the  apostles  to  the  Jews,  and  he  the  apostle 
lo  the  Gentiles,  gave  each  other  the  right  hand  of  fellowship, 

^  dial.  ii.  9  :  "  And  when  they  perceived  the  grace  that  was  given  unto 
me,  James  and  Cephas  and  John,  they  who  were  reputed  to  be  pillars, 
gave  to  me  and  Barnabas  the  right  hands  of  fellowship,  that  we  should  go 
unto  the  Gentiles,  and  they  unto  the  circumcision." 


A  VISIBLE  UNITY  21 

because  they  recognized  that  they  had  a  common  faith  in  the  same 
Christ.  It  was  the  recognition  of  a  common  beUef  in  the  One 
Christ,  the  knowledge  tliat  tliey  all  had  within  them  a  new 
faith  which  had  revolutionised  their  lives,  and  was  to  express 
itself  in  their  whole  character  and  conduct,  that  made  them  feel 
the  kinship  with  each  other  which  was  expressed  in  the  common 
name  "  brethren."  All  down  through  the  early  centuries  this 
idea  that  Christians  form  one  brotherhood  finds  abundant 
expression.  Brotherhood  alternates  with  Ecclesia  in  the  oldest 
sets  of  ecclesiastical  canons,'  while  omnis  fraternitas  and  -rraa-a  r] 
aSeXcpoT)]^  are  used  to  denote  the  whole  of  Christendom." 

The  graceful  deference  which  St.  Paul  always  showed  to  the 
leaders  in  Jerusalem,  who  had  been  in  Christ  before  himself ; 
his  anxieties  about  the  welfare  of  the  poor  "  saints  "  at  Jeru- 
salem, and  his  care  to  provide  for  their  needs  ;  ^  the  letters 
he  asks  to  be  read  to  all  the  members  of  the  churches  to  which 
they  are  addressed,  and  sometimes  to  other  churches  also  ;  "* 
the  eagerness  with  which  he  communicates  the  fact  that  the 
church  he  is  writing  to  enjoys  a  reputation  for  hospitality  to- 
wards wayfaring  brethren  ;  ^  the  salutations  his  letters  contain 
from  one  church  to  another,'"  and  from  individual  Christians 
to  the  churches  ;  ''  the  messages  sent  by  his  assistants  ;  his 
and  their  frequent  journeyings  from  church  to  church — are  all 
evidences  of  his  unwearied  efforts  to  make  the  universality 
of  the  Christian  brotherhood  widely  manifest. 

He  did  more.     He  grouped  his  churches  in  a  statesmanlike 

'  See  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  where  eKKXrjaLa  appears  in  §  1 
and  aS€X(fi6Tr]<;  in  §  2  ;  Texte  u.  Untersuchungen,  II.  v.  7,  12. 

-  For  universa  fraternitas,  see  the  tract  De  Aleatorihus,  1 ;  Texte  u. 
U ntersuchungen,  V.  i.  11  ;  omnis  fraternitas,  V.  i.  14  ;  compare  Tertullian, 
Apologia,  39;  De  pracscriptione,  20;  De  pmlicitia,  13.  For  ttuo-u  7} 
uScA^oTi;?,  see  1  Clem.  ii.  4  ;  and  Harnack's  note  on  the  passage  ;  also 
1  Peter  ii.  17.  3  Acts  xi.  30 ;    cf.  xii.  25. 

^  Col.  iv.  IG  ;  where  St.  Paul  asks  that  his  letter  be  read  to  tlie  Church 
of  Laodicea. 

5  l-jTiiess.  iv.  9-11.  <^  Rom.  xvi.  16;    1  Cor.  xvi.  19. 

'    7  Rom.  xvi.  21-23  ;    1  Cor.  xvi.  19  ;   Gal.  i.  2  ;   Phil.  iv.  21,  22  ;   Col.  i. 
1,  2. 


22  THE  CONCEPTION   OF   THE  CHURCH 

way  so  that  each  could  support  the  others.  His  statesmanship 
discerned  the  advantages  which  the  imperial  system,  with  its 
trade  routes,  its  postal  arrangements  and  its  provincial  capitals, 
gave  not  merely  for  the  propagation  of  the  Gospel,  but  for  the 
fellowship  of  the  churches.  Corinth  was  the  centre  for  the 
churches  of  Achaia,  and  the  second  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians 
is  addressed  to  all  the  Christians  within  that  important  Roman 
province.'  Round  Ephesus"  were  grouped  the  churches  of  Asia — 
Smyrna,  Pergamos,  Thyatira,  Sardis,  Philadelphia,  Laodicea, 
with  Troas  and  others  on  the  coast,  and  Colossae  and  Hierapolis 
in  the  Lycus  valley.^  The  churches  of  Macedonia  were,  in  all 
probability,  grouped  round  Thessalonica,'*  and  those  of  Galatia 
formed  another  group,  although  we  are  not  told  what  the  centre 
was.5 

While  engaged  in  giving  visibility  to  the  unity  of  the  churches 
he  had  planted  St.  Paul  was  never  unmindful  that  he  wished 
also  to  see  them  united  visibly  with  the  churches  of  Jerusalem 
and  Judea.  He  had  started  with  the  thought  of  a  visible  fellow- 
ship between  Jew  and  Gentile,  and  the  union  which  was  symbo- 
lised when  Barnabas  and  he  gave  and  received  the  right  hand 
of  fellowship  with  Peter,  James  and  John,  was  never  far  from 
his  thoughts.  He  thought  of  One  Church  of  Christ  which  em- 
braced Jew  and  Gentile  all  the  world  over.'' 
i  But  perhaps  the  evidence  of  the  apostle's  method  of  im- 
planting a  sense  of  a  visible  unity  within  the  Church  of  Christ 
is  best  seen  in  the  methods,  plan  and  motive  of  the  great  collection 
for  the  saints  at  Jerusalem,  which  fills  so  large  a  place  in  his 
epistles. 

This  great  collection  was  no  mere  spontaneous  outburst  of 
Christian  charity  like  the  previous  succours  sent  to  the  poor  of 
Jerusalem.  It  was  a  carefully-planned  attempt  to  unite  a 
host  of  independent  churches,  which  represented  wide  areas, 

'  2  Cor.  i.  1.  2  1  Cor.  xvi.  19;    Acts  xix.  10. 

3  Ramsay,  St.  Paul  the  Traveller,  p.  274.  4  1  Thess.  iv?  10. 

5  1  Cor.  xvi.  1.  6  1  Cor.  x.  32 ;   xii.  13  ;   Rom.  iii.  29. 


A  VISIBLE   UNITY  23 

in  co-operative  brotherly  action.  The  preparations  occupied 
more  than  a  year's  time.  The  principle  of  representation  was 
introduced.  Each  group  of  contributing  churches  sent  deputies, 
all  of  whom  joined  the  apostle  at  different  places  and  at  different 
dates,  and  accompanied  him  to  Jerusalem,  bearing  with  them 
the  money  collected.  The  anxiety  which  the  apostle  displayed 
in  the  careful  arrangement  of  all  the  details  ;  the  patience  with 
which  he  awaited  the  complete  mustering  of  the  delegates  on  the 
road  ;  the  determination  that  nothing  should  prevent  him  from 
accompanying  the  delegates  to  Jerusalem — not  even  prophetic 
warnings  of  danger  nor  the  hindrance  of  cherished  plans  to 
visit  Rome — all  combine  to  show  that  he  regarded  it  as  the  ful- 
filment of  long  cherished  plans  for  making  visible  the  fellowship 
of  all  beUevers  in  the  way  that  best  commended  itself  to  his 
mind.^ 

It  may  be  that  the  success  of  this  mustering  of  his  mission 
churches,  this  triumphant  experiment  of  co-operation  and  re- 
presentation, combined  with  the  assurance  that  Jew  and  Gentile 
were  at  last  dwelHng  harmoniously  within  the  One  Household 
of  God,  kindled  the  thoughts  which  find  expression  in  the  epistles 
of  his  Roman  captivity.  The  unity  of  the  wide-spreading  Church 
of  Christ  was  at  last  made  visible  to  the  eyes  of  sense,  not  by 
uniformity  of  external  polity,  but  by  the  manifestation  of 
brotherly  love.  The  actual  unity  of  all  believers  was  conspicuous 
in  this  great  fruit  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 

If  we  follow  the  accounts  given  us  in  the  Acts,  the  tests  of  what 
was  required  for  visible  fellowship  by  the  leaders  of  the  church 
in  Jerusalem  did  not  differ  greatly  from  those  demanded  by  St. 
Paul.  It  seemed  to  be  their  custom  when  they  heard  of  some 
new  and  unexpected  appearance  of  faith  in  Jesus  to  send  down 

^  Rendall,  The  Pauline  Collection  for  the  Saints,  Expositor,  Nov.  1893. 
For  St.  Paul's  conception  of  what  was  meant  by  "  fellowship  "  and  the 
methods  he  took  to  make  it  visible,  see  Weizsacker,  The  Apostolic  Age  of 
the  Christian  Church  (Eng.  Trans.)  I.  p.  46  ff. ;  II.  pp.  307-9  ;  and  Ramsay, 
Si.  Pavl  the  Traveller,  pp.  54,  130  ff. 


24  THE   CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 

some  one  to  inquire  about  it.  Peter  and  John  were  sent  to 
Samaria  to  inquire  into  the  conversions  among  the  Samaritans 
made  by  the  preaching  of  Philip/  Barnabas  was  sent  down 
to  Antioch  on  a  similar  errand.^  The  tests  applied  in  both 
cases  seem  to  have  been :  Are  there  any  manifestations  of  the 
fruits  of  the  Spirit  in  the  lives  of  the  new  converts  ?  The  case 
of  Antioch  is  most  instructive.  The  Gospel  had  been  pro- 
claimed there,  we  know  not  how  or  by  whom.  The  apostles 
at  Jerusalem  seem  to  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  procla- 
mation. An  infant  church  had  come  into  being  without  their 
guidance  or  assistance.  Its  birth  is  unrecorded  ;  its  earliest 
history  unknown  ;  the  congregation  is  in  being  before  the  apostles 
seem  to  have  heard  of  it.  When  the  delegate  from  Jerusalem 
appeared  and  made  his  inquiries,  what  satisfied  him  was  that 
the  grace  of  God  was  manifestly  with  the  brethren  there.  The 
believers  in  Antioch  and  the  delegate  from  Jerusalem  had  the 
same  faith  in  the  same  Saviour,  and  their  faith  found  its  proper 
outcome  in  a  renewed  Ufe.  That  was  enough  for  fellowship  or 
visible  and  fraternal  union.  We  see  no  attempt  to  impose 
any  external  ecclesiastical  ordinances,  no  suggestions  about 
the  need  for  showing  themselves  to  be  in  the  line  of  the  "  his- 
storic  continuity  of  the  church  "  by  accepting  circumcision  or 
otherwise.  Whether  we  take  the  reception  of  Cornelius,  the 
welcome  accorded  to  the  Samaritan  converts,  or  the  joy  of 
Barnabas  when  he  perceived  that  the  grace  of  God  was  manifest 
in  Antioch,  the  unity  of  the  Christian  Church  was  made  visible 
to  the  eyes  of  sense,  not  by  uniformity  of  organization,  but  by 
the  manifestation  of  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit ;  that  was  the  one 
feature  that  was  regarded  as  proof  that  it  was  worthy  of  being 
received  into  the  common  fellowship. 

IV.  To  this  visible  society  belongs  Authority.  The  very  thought 

of  a  Christian  Church  visible  suggests  the  idea  of  a  separate 

community  with  a  distinct  sphere  of  religious  life  ;  and  this  in 

turn  implies  that  the  society  must  have,  like  every  form  of  cor- 

^  Acts  viii.-  14-27.  ^  Acts  xi.  22,  23. 


ITS  AUTHORITY  25 

porate  social  existence,  powers  of  oversight  and  discipline  to 
be  exercised  upon  its  members.  But  the  authority  which  the 
Church  possesses  is  altogether  different  from  what  a  voluntary 
association  of  men  may  exercise  upon  its  members,  and  of 
another  kind  from  what  is  possessed  by  lawful  civil  government. 
The  authority  comes  from  Christ  Himself.  The  Christian 
Democracy  is  also  a  Theocracy ;  it  combines  the  two  ideas  of 
rule  associated  with  the  Greek  and  the  Hebrew  uses  of  the  word 
"  ecclesia."  While  the  authority  belongs  to  the  whole  member- 
ship, and  is  therefore  democratic ;  it  nevertheless  comes  from 
above,  and  is  therefore  theocratic.^  It  comes  from  Jesus  Christ, 
who  is  the  Head  of  the  Church.^ 

Our  Lord  has  intimated  that  He  has  imparted  this  authority 
to  His  Church  in  many  recorded  sayings,  and  in  particular 
in  three  well-known  passages  :  in  Matt.  xvi.  13-19  ;  Matt,  xviii.i   ; 
15-20,  and  in  John  xx.  21-23.        ZV)pf   alf^^ 

The  first  promise  was  made  to  St.  Peter  in  very  special  cir- 
cumstances. Our  Lord  had  asked  a  question  of  all  His  disciples. 
St.  Peter,  answering  impetuously  in  their  name,  made  himself 
their  representative.  His  answer  was  an  adoring  confession 
of  his  faith  in  the  Person  of  Christ  ^ — a  confession  which  contained 
in  germ  all  the  future  confessions  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  and 
which  made  him  the  spokesman  for  the  mighty  multitude  which 

'  Some  Anglican  divines  make  strange  deductions  from  the  truth 
that  the  authority  which  belongs  to  the  Church  comes  from  above.  They 
at  once  infer  that  inasmuch  as  the  authority  comes  from  above  it  cannot 
come  directly  to  the  whole  Christian  society  ;  but  must  come  through  an 
official  class  of  ministers  who  act  as  a  species  of  plastic  medium  between 
our  Lord  and  His  people.  Strange  how  Gnostic  and  Arian  ideas  banished 
from  the  creeds  of  the  Church  linger  in  thoughts  about  Orders  !  Then 
by  a  confusion  of  ideas  they  transfer  the  phrase  "  from  above  "  to  the 
human  sphere,  and  make  it  an  essential  idea  of  legitimate  ecclesiastical 
rule  that  it  must  be  invariably  communicated  from  a  higher  to  a  lower 
order  of  ministry  !  Why  should  authority  imparted  thj-ough  the  Christian 
Society  be  regarded  as  "  from  beneath,"  as  of  the  earth  earthy  ? 

-  Ephes.  V.  23  ;   Col.  i.  18. 

3  "  There  is  a  tone  of  loving  reverence  and  worship  in  the  words  '  Thou 
art  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  Living  God.'     They  answer  to  our  Lord's 


26  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 

no  man  can  number,  who  were  to  make  the  same  confession  of 
adoring  trust  in  their  Saviour.  The  confession  was  an  inspired 
one  ;  it  had  been  revealed  to  St.  Peter  by  the  Father  ;  there 
was  divinity  in  it,  for  God  gave  the  revelation  which  prompted 
the  confession ;  and  there  was  humanity  in  it,  for  the  man 
appropriated  and  made  his  own  what  the  Father  had  revealed 
to  him.  It  was  the  first  of  what  was  to  become  a  multitudinous 
sea  of  voices  of  men  inspired  by  the  Father  to  know  and  to  con- 
fess that  Jesus  was  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  Living  God.  It 
was  to  the  Peter  who  answered  as  representing  the  Twelve,  to 
Peter  who  was  the  spokesman  for  countless  thousands  of  the 
faithful  who  down  through  the  march  of  Time  would  make  the 
same  glad  confession,  that  the  promise  was  given. 

The  promise  was  of  authority  to  bear  the  Icey  of  the  household 
of  the  faithful,  to  have  the  power  to  let  in  and  keep  out  from 
the  household.  The  words  and  metaphor  used  were  the  familiar 
Jewish  terms  to  denotes  delegated  authority.  The  thought 
conveyed  is  commonly  and  correctly  explained  by  a  reference 
to  the  substitution  of  Shebna  for  Eliakim  in  the  stewardship 
of  the  House  of  David  ;  '  and  it  is  implied  that  our  Lord,  in  the 
word  He  used,  made  St.  Peter,  and  those  he  represented,  stewards 
of  the  Household  of  the  faithful  with  the  authority  to  "  bind  " 
and  to  "  loose,"  to  "  prohibit"  and  to  "  permit,"  to  "  admit  " 
and  "  exclude."  Other  passages  in  the  New  Testament,  making 
use  of  the  same  simile  of  the  major-domo  with  his  key  and  his 
power  of  letting  in  or  locking  out,  assist  us  to  see  the  fuller  mean- 
ing of  the  promise  recorded.     The  one  is  a  warning  and  the  other 

picture  of  the  spiritual  experience  of  His  disciples  in  His  great  interces- 
sory prayer ;  '  I  manifested  Thy  name  unto  the  men  whom  Thou  gavest 
Me  out  of  the  world  ;  Thine  they  were,  and  Thou  gavest  them  to  I\Ie  ; 
and  they  have  kept  Thy  word.  Now  they  know  that  all  things,  whatso- 
ever Thou  hast  given  Me,  are  from  Thee  ;  for  the  words  which  Thou 
gavest  Me,  I  have  given  unto  them  ;  and  they  received  them,  and  knew 
of  a  truth  that  I  came  forth  from  Thee,  and  they  believed  that  Thou  didst 
send  Me."-     Bannerman,  The  Scrifture  Doctrine  of  the  Church,  p.  169. 

'  Isaiah  xxii.  20,  22.  Compare  Gore,  The  Church  and  the  Ministry,  p. 
223. 


ITS   AUTHORITY  27 

an  encouragement.  Our  Lord  called  the  attention  of  his  fol- 
lowers to  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  who  "  sat  in  Moses'  seat," 
and  had  to  be  obeyed.  They  had  the  keys  and  they  used  them 
to  shut  the  door  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  against  men.'  Jesus 
pronounces  woe  on  them  for  using  the  keys  in  this  way.  Their 
shutting  out,  although  they  have  the  keys  officially,  was  evidently 
not  ratified  in  heaven.  Henco  we  must  infer  that  the  mere 
official  position  of  being  the  bearer  of  the  "  keys  "  docs  not  always 
ensure  that  what  is  done  on  earth  by  the  bearer  will  be  ratified 
in  heaven.  Then  in  the  message  to  the  Church  in  Philadelphia, 
the  brethren  there  were  told  that  the  real  bearer  of  the  "  keys  " 
is  the  Lord  Himself.^  It  is  only  when  He  lets  in  that  there  can 
be  no  exclusion  ;  it  is  only  when  He  shuts  out  that  there  is  any 
real  exclusion.  A  real  authority  is  bestowed,  and  real  powers 
are  given ;  but  just  as  Peter's  confession  depended  on  the  in- 
spiration of  the  Father,  so  the  ratification  of  the  exercise  of  power 
depends  on  its  Christ-like  use. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  the  second  saying  was  addressed  to  the 
Twelve,  or  to  a  larger  group  of  disciples,  but  the  advice  which 
precedes  the  promise  is  to  be  applied  and  can  only  be  applied 
to  all  the  followers  of  Jesus  within  a  community.  It  gives  direc- 
tions for  dealing  v/ith  offences  and  offenders  within  the  Christian 
society,  and  has  been  commonly  regarded  as  the  Scriptural 
warrant  for  the  exercise  of  discipline  within  the  Church.  It 
proceeds  on  the  idea  that  offences  may  arise  from  thoughtless- 
ness as  well  as  from  wilful  sin,  and  that  the  offender,  in  spite  of 
liis  offence,  is  a  brother  to  be  won  back  to  brotherliness.  It 
prescribes  a  threefold  attempt  to  win  back  the  erring  brother 
to  a  state  of  brotherly  feeling.  If  everything  fails,  if  the  offender 
has  refused  to  hear  the  offended  person  pleading  with  him  in 
his  own  person,  if  he  has  rejected  the  remonstrances  of  two  or 

'  Matt,  xxiii.  2,  3,  13  : — ort  KAeUre  Tyv  /JacriAemi'  twv  oipajuJi'  t/x- 
irf}oaO€v  Toil'  avOpuiTTcor- 

^  Rev;  iii.  7  : — raSc  Ae'yci  6  ayio?,  6  aXr]6Lv6<;,  6  tx.^v  Trjv  KXtlv 
Aaj3i8,  6  di'ot'ywv  koI  oiSeis  kXciVci,  koi  kXciW  Kal  ouSei?  dioi'yet. 


28  THE   CONCEPTION  OF  THE   CHURCH 

three  fellow-Christians  pleading;  with  him,  if  he  finally  spurns 
the  warnings  of  the  Church  or  whole  Christian  society,  then, 
and  not  till  then,  does  the  thought  of  punishment  enter.  The 
punishment,  if  punishment  it  can  be  called,  is  expulsion  of  a 
certain  kind  from  the  Christian  communion.  The  offender  is 
to  be  treated  as  the  Jewish  Synagogue  acted  towards  a  Gentile 
or  a  publican.  He  was  to  be  looked  on  as  if  he  had  never  be- 
longed to  the  society,  or  as  if  he  had  voluntarily  excluded  himself 
by  the  course  of  life  he  had  chosen  to  persist  in. 

We  are  told  that  the  decisions  of  the  Church  on  earth  in  such 
cases  as  those  described  will  be  ratified  in  Heaven.  This  is  a 
confirmation  of  the  promise  given  to  St.  Peter,  and  like  it  is 
strictly  conditional.  The  condition  attached  is  that  there 
must  be  a  real  and  living  communion  between  the  Church  and 
its  Head  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  so  that  the  Church  decides  in  a 
Christ-like  spirit.  It  is  impossible  to  separate  the  promise  from 
the  verses  which  immediately  follow.  Our  Lord  Himself  joins 
them  together  by  very  solemn  words.  This  condition  does  not 
render  the  promise  of  ratification  deceptive.  The  fellowship 
with  Christ,  which  is  the  condition,  is  to  be  had  provided  it  is 
sought  for  earnestly,  honestly  and  trustingly  in  prayer  (v.  19). 

The  authority  is  given  to  the  society  of  believers,  whether 
two  or  three  meeting  together  in  a  place  far  from  any  others,  or 
a  great  and  organised  community.  It  is  not  entrusted  by  our 
Lord  directly  to  any  official  class  ;  it  is  not  given  to  any  human 
power  not  rising  out  of  the  company  of  the  faithful.  It  is  given 
to  the  visible  fellowship,  and  it  belongs  to  them  in  reality,  as 
well  as  in  name,  in  the  measure  in  which  they  have  living  com- 
munion with  Him  Who  is  their  Head. 

The  third  promise  seems  to  have  been  made  to  the  nucleus 
of  the  infant  Church  in  Jerusalem,  if  we  are  to  accept  Luke  xxiv. 
33  if.  as  the  parallel  passage — to  "  the  disciples  and  those  who 
were  with  them."  It  is  commonly  held  to  include  all  that  is 
bestowed  in  the  other  two,  and  perhaps  something  even  more 
solemn— the  power  to  pronounce  the  divine  sentence  of  pardon 


ITS  AUTHORITY  29 

involved  in  the  proclamation  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ.  Whatever 
be  the  powers  granted,  they  are  given  to  the  whole  company 
of  believers  and  not  to  any  class  among  them.  They  are  also, 
as  in  the  earlier  passages,  given  under  conditions.  The  power 
can  only  manifest  itself  in  those  who  are  filled  with  the  Spirit 
of  Christ.'  In  virtue  of  this  promise  with  its  gift  of  power  the 
visible  Church  of  Christ  can  Avith  absolute  confidence  declare 
the  gospel  of  pardon  through  the  work  of  Christ,  and  can  assert 
that  the  divine  conditions  are  those  which  it  proclaims.  In 
virtue  of  the  same  promise  every  individual  Christian  is  entitled 
to  affirm  with  absolute  certainty  to  every  penitent  sinner  that 
God  pardons  his  sins  if  he  accepts  Jesus  as  his  All-sufficient 
Saviour." 

The  authority  was  given  in  the  first  passage  to  one  man  ;  in 
the  second  probably  to  the  Twelve  ;  in  the  third  to  the  whole 
Christian  community.  In  each  case  the  more  particular  is 
absorbed^  in  the  more  general.     The  power  given  to  St.  Peter 

^  John  XX.  22,  23  : — kol  tovto  cittwv  ert^t'o-T/crev  kol  Xeyet  aiTOis, 
Ad/Serc  Hvevfxa  "Ajlov  av  tlvwv  a(f)rjTe  to.?  d/xaprtas,  u(f)UvTaL 
(■i^e'tovTat  Ti.,  W.  H.)  aurois-  av  Tti/wv  KpaTiJTe,  KCKparv/i'Tttt. 

-  "  The  main  thought  which  the  words  convey  is  that  of  the  reaUty 
of  the  power  of  absohition  from  sin  granted  to  the  Church  and  not  of  the 
particular  organization  through  which  the  po\\  er  is  administered.  There 
is  nothing  in  the  context  to  show  that  the  gift  was  confined  to  any  particular 
group  (as  the  apostles)  among  the  whole  company  present.  The  com- 
mission must  therefore  be  regarded  as  properly  the  commission  of  the 
Christian  society,  and  not  as  that  of  the  Christian  ministry  (cf.  Matt.  v. 
13,  14).  The  great  mystery  of  the  world,  absolutely  insoluble  by  thought, 
is  that  of  sin  ;  the  mission  of  Christ  was  to  bring  salvation  from  sin  ;  and 
the  work  of  the  Church  is  to  apply  to  all  that  which  He  has  gained.  Christ 
risen  was  Himself  the  sign  of  the  completed  overthrow  of  death,  the  end 
of  sin,  and  the  impartmcnt  of  His  hfe  necessarily  carried  with  it  the  fruit 
of  His  conquest.  Thus  the  promise  is  in  one  sense  an  interpretation  of 
the  gift.  The  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit  iinds  its  application  in  the  communi- 
cation or  withholding  of  the  powers  of  the  new  life.  .  .  .  The  promise, 
a;;  being  made  not  to  one  but  to  the  Society,  carries  with  it  of  necessity 
.  .  .  the  character  of  perpetuity:  the  society  never  dies.  .  .  .  The  exer- 
cise of  the  power  must  be  placed  hi  the  closest  cormcxion  with  the 
faculty  of  spii-itual  discernment,  consequent  on  the  gift  of  the  Holy 
Spirit."-     Westcott,  Gospel  of  i>t.  John,  p.  2\)o. 


30  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 

in  the  first  passage  is  merged  in  the  authority  given  to  the 
Twelve  in  the  second  ;  and  the  authority  given  to  the  Twelve  is 
in  turn  merged  in  the  authority  given  to  the  v/hole  congregation. 
St.  Peter  received  the  power  because  he  represented  the  Twelve 
directly,  and  the  whole  Church  founded  on  him  and  on  his  con- 
fession indirectly.  The  Twelve  received  it  because  they  repre- 
sented the  Church  which  was  to  come  into  existence  through 
their  ministry.  After  the  Resurrection  the  whole  infant  Church 
received  the  same,  if  not  greater,  authority.  St.  Peter  was  to 
die;  the  Twelve  also  were  to  go  the  way  of  all  flesh;  but  the  society 
was  to  remain,  and  with  it  the  authority  bestowed  upon  it  by  its 
Lord. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  very  varying  interpretations  of  these 
three  passages  have  been  given  by  different  schools  of  theolo- 
gians ;  that  Romanists  found  on  the  promise  given  to  St.  Peter, 
and  that  some  xinglicans  insist  that  the  third  promise  was  made 
to  the  Eleven  only,  even  if  the  company  included  other  disciples, 
and  build  up  the  edifice  of  Apostolic  Succession  on  this  narrow 
foundation ;  and  that  both  affirm  that  the  authority  which  our 
Lord  gave  to  His  Church  was  placed  directly  in  the  hands  of 
office-bearers,  and  not  in  those  of  the  whole  membership. 

To  examine  at  length  the  various  exegetical  arguments  brought 
forward  in  support  of  these  positions  would  lead  far  beyond  the 
space  at  our  disposal ;  but  two  general  considerations  may  be 
adduced.  Such  an  interpretation  seems  to  be  against  the 
analogy  of  our  Lord's  teaching ;  and  He  was  not  so  understood 
by  His  New  Testament  Church. 

While  our  Lord  chose  Twelve  to  form  an  inner  circle  of  dis- 
ciples, while  He  trained  them  by  close  companionship  with  Him- 
self for  special  service,  while  He  weaned  them  in  half-conscious 
ways  from  their  old  life,  it  nowhere  appears  that  He  bestowed 
upon  them  a  special  rank  or  instituted  a  peculiar  or  exceptional 
office  of  stewardship  of  divine  mysteries  in  their  persons.'     It 

'  Cf.  1  Peler  iv.  10  :  "  According  as  each  hath  received  a  gift,  ministering 
it  among  yourselves,  as  good  stewards  of  the  manifold  grace  of  God."- 


ITS  AUTHORITY  31 

is  improbable  that  He  bestowed  on  them  the  name  apostles  to 
be  a  general  and  distinguishing  title,  and  one  unshared  in  by 
other  disciples  besides  the  Twelve.  Our  Lord  called  them 
apostles  when  He  sent  them  on  a  special  mission  among  the 
villages  ;  they  were  apostles  while  this  mission  lasted  ;  when 
it  came  to  an  end  they  were  the  Twelve  or  inner  circle  of  inti- 
mates of  the  Master.'  After  the  Death  and  Resurrection  of 
the  Lord  the  task  to  which  they  had  been  trained  by  companion- 
ship with  the  Saviour  and  in  the  apprentice  mission  among  the 
villages,  became  their  life  work,  but  it  was  shared  in  from  the 
very  beginning  by  others  who  bore  with  them  the  common 
name  apostle.*  Nor  does  our  Lord  make  any  promises  to  the 
Twelve  which  imply  that  He  had  bestowed  upon  them  a  special 
rank  in  the  Church  which  was  to  come.  He  told  them  that 
whoever  received  them  received  Him  ;  but  this  was  a  privilege 
shared  in  by  the  least  of  His  followers,  for  whoever  received  a 
little  child  in  His  name  received  Him.^  It  is  impossible  to  avoid 
noticing  how  the  ancient  manuals  of  church^orgaiuzajion  have 
caught  the  spirit  of  Christ's  teaching,  that  there  are  to  be  no 
lordships  in  His  Church.     The  qualifications  set  forth  for  office 

^  The  relations  of  the  Twelve  to  the  Church  of  Christ  are  strikingly 
brought  out  by  Dr.  Hort  in  his  Christian  Ecclesia,  pp.  23—11.  On  the  title 
apostle  he  says  :  "  Taking  these  facts  together  respecting  the  usage  of  the 
Gospels,  we  are  led,  I  think,  to  the  conclusion  that  in  its  original  sense  the 
term  Apostle  was  not  intended  to  describe  the  habitual  relation  of  the 
Twelve  to  our  Lord  during  the  days  of  His  ministry,  but  strictly  speaking 
only  that  mission  among  the  villages,  of  which  the  begirming  and  the  end 
are  recorded  for  us."  .  .  .  "If  they  (the  Twelve)  represented  an 
apostolic  order  Avithin  the  Ecclesia  then  the  Holy  Communion  must  have 
been  intended  only  for  members  of  that  order,  and  the  rest  of  tlie  Ecdeaia 
had  no  part  in  it.  But  if,  as  the  men  of  the  apostohc  age  and  subsequent 
ages  beUevcd  without  hesitation,  the  Holy  Communion  was  meant  for 
the  Ecclesia  at  large,  then  the  Twelve  sat  down  that  evening  as  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Ecclesia  at  large  ;  they  were  disciples  more  than  they 
were  apostles." 

2  St.  Paul  in  his  account  of  the  appearances  of  our  Lord  after  His 
Resurrection  distinguishes  between  the  Twelve  and  apostles  ;  1  Cor.  xv. 
5-8  ;    cf.  below,  pp.  74-85. 

3  Matt.  X.  40  ;  cf.  Luke  x.  16  ;  Matt,  xviii.  5  ;  Mark  ix.  37  ;  Luke  ix.  48. 


32  THE   CONCEPTION  OF  THE   CHURCH 

are  those  which  every  Christian  ought  to  possess  ;  and  the 
duties  said  to  belong  to  office  are  those  which  for  the  most  part 
all  Christians  ought  to  perform.  We  do  not  see  orders  in  the 
sense  of  ecclesiastical  rank  whose  authority  does  not  come  from 
the  people ;  we  see  ecclesiastical  order  and  arrangement  of 
service.  Whatever  power  and  authority  the  Church  of  Christ 
possesses  in  gift  from  the  Lord  resides  in  the  membership  of  the 
Church  and  not  in  any  superior  rank  of  officials  who  have  re- 
ceived an  authority  over  the  Church  directly  from  Christ  Him- 
self. 

The  Church  of  the  New  Testament  evidently  interpreted  the 
words  of  our  Lord  to  mean  that  He  placed  the  authority  which 
He  had  bestowed  upon  His  Church  in  the  hands  of  the  member- 
ship, of  the  community  which  formed  the  local  church. 

Even  in  the  Primitive  Church  in  Jerusalem,  where  the  pre- 
sence of  an  apostle  was  seldom  lacking,  the  community  was 
self-governing,  and  acted  on  the  conviction  that  the  authority 
bestowed  by  Christ  on  His  Church  belonged  to  the  whole  congre- 
gation of  the  faithful  and  not  to  an  apostolic  hierarchy.  The 
assembly  of  the  local  church  appointed  delegates  and  elected 
office-bearers.  The  vice-apostle  Matthias  and  the  Seven  were 
elected  by  the  assembly,^  and  a  similar  assembly  appointed 
Barnabas  to  be  its  delegate  to  Antioch.^  The  assembly  of  the 
local  church  summoned  even  apostles  before  it,  and  passed 
judgment  upon  their  conduct.^  The  apostles  might  suggest,  but 
the  congregation  ruled. 

When  we  pass  from  the  Church  at  Jerusalem  to  the  churches 
planted  by  the  ministry  of  St.  Paul,  the  proofs  of  democratic 
self-government  are  still  more  abundant.  When  the  apostle 
urges  the  duty  of  stricter  discipline,  or  when  he  recommends 

^  Acts  i.  23  ;   vi.  5.  ^  ^cts  xi.  22. 

3  On  the  conduct  of  St.  Peter  at  Caesarea,  Acts  xi.  1—1;  on  the  opinions 
and  practices  of  St.  Paul,  xv.  12,  22-29,  and  whatever  dili'erences  may  be 
found  in  the  account  of  tlie  proceedings  in  this  cliajjter  and  in  St.  Paul's 
statement  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  (Gal.  ii.  1  £f.)  there  is  no  ques- 
tion that  both  recognize  the  supremacy  of  the  assembly  of  the  Church. 


A  SACERDOTAL  SOCIETY  33 

a  merciful  treatment  of  one  who  had  lapsed,  he  writes  to  the  whole 
community  in  whose  hands  the  authority  resides.  He  pictures 
himself  in  their  midst  while  they  are  engaged  in  this  painful 
duty.  He  assures  them  that  they  have  the  authority  of  the  Lord 
for  the  exercise  of  discipline.  For  however  thoroughly  demo- 
cratic the  government  of  the  New  Testament  Cliurch  was,  it 
was  still  as  thoroughly  theocratic.  The  presence  of  the  Lord 
Himself  was  with  them  in  the  exercise  of  the  authority  He  had 
entrusted  to  their  charge.'  The  evidence  of  the  presence  of 
Christ  was  of  the  same  kind  as  witnessed  His  presence  in  the 
actions  of  public  worship.  The  local  churches  recognised  His 
presence  in  the  manifestation  of  the  "  gifts  "  of  His  Spirit  be- 
stowed upon  them.  These  "  gifts  "  included  not  only  the  be- 
stowal of  grace  needed  for  exhortation  to  edification,  but  also 
the  wisdom  to  "  govern "  and  to  "  guide."  The  theocratic 
element  was  not  given  in  a  hierarchy  imposed  upon  the  Church 
from  without ;  it  manifested  itself  within  the  community.  It 
appeared  in  the  presence,  recognition  and  use  made  of  gifts  of 
government  bestowed  upon  its  membership  which  were  none  the 
less  spiritual,  divine  and  "  from  above,"  because  they  concerned 
the  ordinary  duties  of  oversight  and  manifested  themselves  in 
the  natural  endowments  of  members  of  the  community.  The 
presence  of  Christ  among  His  people  may  be  as  easily  mani- 
fested in  the  decision  which  the  assembly  of  the  local  church 
arrives  at  by  a  majority^  of  votes  as  in  the  fiat  launched  from 
an  episcopal  chair.  The  latter  is  not  necessarily  from  above, 
and  the  former  is  not  of  necessity  from  beneath. 

V.  Lastly,  the  Church  of  Christ  is  a  sacerdotal  society. 
The  Church  of  Christ  is  continually  represented  as  the  "  ideal 
Israel."     This  is  a  favourite  thought  of  St.  Paul's,  and  it  implies 
that  the  special  function  of  the  Church  of  Christ  is  to  do  in  a 

1  1  Cor.  V.  3-5  ;    Gal.  vi.  1. 

2  The  censure  inflicted  on  the  member  of  the  Corinthian  Church  who 
had  disobeyed  the  Apostle  Paul  was  carried  by  a  majority :  2  Cor.  ii.  6, 
1^  eTTiTt/Aia  avTTj  rj  vtto  twv  TrAeiovwr. 

CM.  3 


34  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 

better  manner  what  the  ancient  Israel  did  imperfectly.  When 
we  ask  what  the  special  function  of  the  ancient  Israel  was, 
we  find  it  given  in  a  great  variety  of  ways,  all  of  which  include 
one  central  thought,  best  expressed  perhaps  by  the  phrase, 
"  To  approach  God."  This  central  idea  was  connected  with 
the  thoughts  of  special  times  of  approach,  or  Holy  Seasons  ; 
with  a  special  place  of  approach,  which  was  the  Temple  of  God's 
Presence  ;  and  with  a  special  set  of  men  who  made  the  approach 
on  behalf  of  their  fellows,  and  who  were  called  Priests.  When 
we  turn  to  the  Church  of  Christ  we  find  the  same  central  thought 
and  the  same  dependent  ideas.  The  main  function  of  the  New 
Testament  Church  is  also  to  approach  God.  Just  as  in  the 
Old  Testament  economy  the  priests  when  approaching  God 
presented  sacrifices  to  Him,  so  in  the  New  Testament  Church 
gifts  are  to  be  presented  to  God,  and  these  gifts  or  offerings 
bear  the  Old  Testament  name  of  sacrifices.  We  are  enjoined 
to  present  our  bodies  ;  '  our  'praise,  "  that  is  the  fruit  of  our  lips 
which  make  confession  to  His  name  "  ;  ^  our  faith  ;  ^  our  alms- 
giving ;  "^  our  "  doing  good  and  communicating."  ^  These  are 
all  called  "  sacrifices,"  or  "  sacrifices  well-pleasing  to  God," 
and,  to  distinguish  them  from  the  offerings  of  the  Old  Testament 
economy,  "spiritual  or  living  sacrifices."^  The  exertions 
made  by  St.  Paul  to  bring  the  heathen  to  a  knowledge  of  the 
Saviour  is  also  called  a  sacrifice  or  offering.^  The  New  Testament 
Church  is  the  ideal  Israel,  and  does  the  work  which  the  ancient 

'  Rom.  xii.  1  :  "I  beseech  you  therefore,  brethren,  by  the  mercies  of 
God,  to  present  your  bodies  a  living  sacrifice,  hoty,  well-pleasing  to  God, 
which  is  your  reasonable  service  {tijv  \oyiK-)]v  Xarpetau  v/xioy)."  The 
thought  expressed  is  that  the  Christian  should  consecrate  the  whole 
personaUty,  body,  soul  and  spirit  to  God  ;  and  thus  all  service  whether 
of  work  or  worship  became  a  sacrifice.     Compare  Ps.  H.  15-17. 

2  Heb.  xiii.  15.  3  PhU.  ii.  17. 

4  Paul's  great  collection  for  the  poor  saints  in  Jerusalem  is  an  offering  : 
Acts  xxiv.  17  ;  so  is  the  contributions  which  the  members  of  the  Church 
at  Phihppi  sent  to  the  apostle  :    Phil.  iv.  18.  5  Heb.  xiii.  16. 

^  ®v(Tiai  TTVcvfxaTLKai :  1  Pet.  ii.  5  ;  Ova-la  ^uxra :  Rom.  xii.  1  ;  of. 
Phib  ii.  17;  7  Rom,  xv.  16. 


A  SACERDOTAL  SOCIETY  35 

Israel  was  appointsd  to  do.  The  limitations  only  have  dis- 
appeared. There  is  no  trace  in  the  New  Testament  Church 
of  any  specially  holy  places  or  times  or  persons.  The  Christian 
ideal  is,  to  quote  the  late  Dr.  Lightfoot,  a  Holy  Season  extending 
all  the  year  round,  a  Temple  confined  only  by  the  limits  of  the 
habitable  globe,  and  a  Priesthood  including  every  believer  in 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.' 

This  does  not  mean  that  the  New  Testament  Church  may  not 
select  special  days  for  the  public  worship  of  God  ;  that  it  may 
not  dedicate  buildings  where  the  faithful  can  meet  together  to 
unite  in  offering  the  sacrifices  of  prayer  and  praise  ;  that  it 
may  not  set  apart  men  from  among  its  membership  and  appoint 
them  to  lead  its  devotions.  But  it  does  mean  that  God  can  be 
approached  at  all  times,  and  in  every  place,  and  by  every  one 
among  His  people.  His  fellow  believers  may  select  one  from 
among  themselves  to  be  their  minister.  There  may  be  a  minister- 
ing priestJiood,  but  there  cannot  be  a  mediating  priesthood  within 
the  Christian  society.  There  is  one  Mediator  only,  and  all,  men, 
women  and  children,  have  the  promise  of  immediate  entrance 
into  the  presence  of  God,  and  are  priests. 

Luther  has  expressed  the  thought  of  the  sacerdotal  character 
of  the  Church  of  Christ  when  he  says,  in  a  description  of  the 
Eucharistic  service  :  "  There  our  priest  or  minister  stands  before 
the  altar,  having  been  publicly  called  to  his  priestly  function  ; 
he  repeats  publicly  and  distinctly  Christ's  words  of  the  Institu- 
tion; I  he  takes  the  Bread  and  the  Wine,  and  distributes  it 
according  to  Christ's  words  ;  and  we  all  kneel  beside  him  and 
around  him,  men  and  women,  young  and  old,  master  and  servant, 
mistress  and  maid,  all  holy  priests  together,  sanctified  by  the 
blood  of  Christ.  We  are  there  in  our  priestly  dignity.  .  .  .  We 
do  not  let  the  priest  proclaim  for  himself  the  ordinance  of  Christ ; 
but  he  is  the  mouthpiece  of  us  all,  and  we  all  say  it  with  him 
in  our  hearts  with  true  faith  in  the  Lamb  of  God  Who  feeds  us 
with  His  Body  and  Blood." 

'  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  (1881),  6th  ed.  p.  183. 


36  THE   CONCEPTION   OF  THE  CHURCH 

This  sacerdotal  character  of  the  whole  Church  of  Christ  was 
maintained  in  the  primitive  Christian  Church  down  to  at  least 
the  middle  of  the  third  century.  Whatever  evinced  a  whole- 
hearted dedication  of  one's  self  to  God  was  a  sacrifice  which 
required  no  mediating  priesthood  in  the  offering.  For  the  Chris- 
tian sacrifice  always  means  a  sacrifice  of  self.  When  Polycarp 
gave  his  body  to  be  burnt  for  the  faith  of  Jesus,  he  gave  it  in 
sacrifice,  and  every  martyr's  death  or  suffering  was  a  sacrifice 
well-pleasing  to  God.'  When  poor  and  humble  believers  fasted 
that  they  might  have  food  to  give  to  the  hungry,  they  were 
sacrificing  a  spiritual  sacrifice.'  When  Christians,  either  at 
home  and  in  private  or  in  the  assembly  for  public  worship, 
poured  forth  prayers  and  thanksgivings,  they  were  offering 
sacrifice  to  God.^  Justin  Martyr  does  not  hesitate  to  call  such 
devotions  "  the  only  perfect  and  well-pleasing  sacrifices  to  God."  "* 

And  the  Holy  Supper,  the  very  apex  and  crown  of  all  Christian 

1  Compare  Letter  of  the  Smijrnaeans  on  the  Martyrdom  of  Polycarp,  14 : 
"  Then  he,  placing  his  arms  behind  him  and  being  bound  to  the  stake,  hke 
a  goodly  ram  out  of  a  great  flock  for  an  offering,  a  burnt  sacrifice  made 
ready  and  acceptable  to  God,  looking  up  to  heaven,  said :  0  Lord  God 
Almighty.    .    .    ." 

2  Aristides,  Apology,  15  :  "  And  if  any  among  the  Christians  is  poor  and 
in  want,  and  they  have  not  overmuch  of  the  means  of  life,  they  fast  two 
or  three  days,  in  order  that  they  may  provide  those  in  need  with  the  food 
they  require." 

A  favourite  phrase  to  describe  widows  and  orphans  was  "  the  altar 
of  God  "  on  which  the  sacrifices  of  almsgiving  were  offered  up.  It  is  used 
by  Polycarp,  To  the  Philippians,  4  ;  also  in  the  Apostolic  ConMitutions, 
ii.  26  and  iv.  3,  of  the  orphans,  the  old  and  all  who  were  supported  by  the 
benevolence  of  the  faithful.  TertuUian  says  of  the  widow  :  "aramenim 
Dei  mundam  proponi  oportet,"  Ad  Uxor.  i.  7. 

3  Clement  of  Alexandria  spiritualizes  the  Old  Testament  sacrifices  to 
make  them  the  forerunners  of  Christian  prayers.  "  And  that  compounded 
incense  which  is  mentioned  in  the  Law,  is  that  which  consists  of  many 
tongues  and  voices  in  prayer  .  .  .  brought  together  in  praises  with  a 
pure  mind,  and  just  and  right  conduct,  from  holy  works  and  righteous 
prayer,"  StromS  Vii.  6.  In  the  same  chapter  he  says  :  "  For  the  sacrifice 
of  the  Church  is  the  word  breathing  as  incense  from  holy  souls,  the 
sacrifice  and  the  whole  mind  being  at  the  same  time  unveiled  to  God," 

4  Dialogue,  117.- 


A   SACERDOTAL   SOCIETY  37 

public  worship,  where  Christ  gives  Himself  to  His  people,  and 
where  His  people  dedicate  themselves  to  Him  in  body,  soul  and 
spirit,  was  always  a  sacrifice  as  prayers,  praises  and  almsgiving 
were.  The  Church  of  Christ  was  a  sacerdotal  society,  its  members 
were  all  priests,  and  its  services  were  all  sacrifices.^ 

Such  is  the  New  Testament  thought  of  the  Church  of  Christ 
— a  Fellowship,  a  United  Fellowship,  a  Visible  Fellowship, 
a  Fellowship  with  an  Authority  bestowed  upon  it  by  its  Lord, 
and  a  sacerdotal  Fellowship  whose  every  member  has  the  right 
of  direct  access  to  the  throne  of  God,  bringing  with  him  the 
sacrifices  of  himself,  of  his  praise  and  of  his  confession. 

*  The  conception  of  a  mutilated  sacerdotalism,  where  one_j2art  of  the 
Christian  worship  is  alone  thought  of  as  the  true  sacrifice,  and  a  small 
portion  of  the  fellowship — the  minisiry — is  declared  to  be  the  priesthood, 
did  not  appear  until  the  time  of  Cyprian,  and  was  his  invention. 


A  Christian  Church   in  Apostolic  Times 


CHAPTER    II 

A    CHRISTIAN   CHURCH   IN   APOSTOLIC   TIMES 

CAN  we,  piercing  the  mists  of  two  thousand  years,  see  a 
Christian  Church  as  it  was  in  Apostohc  times — a  tiny 
island  in  a  sea  of  surrounding  heathenism  ?  Our  vision  gets 
most  assistance  from  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  which  not  only  are 
the  oldest  records  of  the  literature  of  the  New  Testament,  but 
give  us  much  clearer  pictures  of  the  earliest  Christian  assembUes 
for  edification  and  thanksgiving  than  are  to  be  found  in  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles.  The  more  we  study  these  epistles  the  more 
clearly  we  discern  that  we  must  not  project  into  these  primitive 
times  a  picture  taken  from  any  of  the  long  organized  churches 
of  our  days.  On  the  other  hand,  we  can  see  many  an  analogy 
in  the  usages  of  the  growing  churches  of  the  mission  field.  This 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at.  The  primitive  church  and  churches 
growing  among  heathen  surroundings  have  both  to  do  with  the 
origins  of  organization. 

-  For  one  thing,  we  must  remember  that  the  meetings  of  the 
congregation  were  held  in  private  houses  ;  ^  and  as  the  number 
of  believers  grew,  more  than  one  house  must  have  been  placed 
at  the  service  of  the  brethren  for  their  meetings  for  public  worship 
and  for  the  transaction  of  the  necessary  business  of  the  congre- 
gation. We  are  told  that  in  the  primitive  church  at  Jerusalem 
the  Lord's  Supper  was  dispensed  in  the  houses,"  and  that  the 
brethren  met  in  the  house   of  Mary  the  mother  of  John  Mark,^ 

'  It  is  true  that  we  read  in  Acts  xix.  9,  10  that  St.  Paul  held  meetings 
in  the  Schola  of  Tyrannus  :    but  this  is  a  unique  instance. 

^  Acts  ii.  46  :    kXwtc^  t€  kut   oIkov  apTov. 
i-*  3  Acts  xii.  12  :    "  The  house  of  Mary,  the  mother  of  John  whose  sur- 
name was  Mark;  where  many  were  gathered  together  and  were  praying." 


42     A   CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC   TIMES 

in  the  house  of  James  the  brother  of  our  Lord,'  and  probably 
elsewhere.  At  the  close  of  the  Ejjistlc  to  the  Komans,  St.  Paul 
sends  greetings  to  three,  perhaps  five,  groups  of  brethren  gathered 
round  clusters  of  distinguished  Christians  whom  he  names.  One 
of  these  groups  he  calls  a  "  church,"  and  the  others  were  pre- 
sumably so  also.^  The  account  of  Saul,  the  persecutor,  making 
havoc  of  the  Church,  entering  every  house  and  haling  men  and 
women  to  prison,  reads  like  a  record  of  the  persecution  of  the 
Huguenots  among  the  house-churches  of  Reformation  times  in 
France,  or  like  raids  on  house-conventicles  in  the  Covenanting 
times  in  Scotland.  It  becomes  evident  too  as  we  study  these 
early  records  that  when  it  was  possible,  that  is,  when  any  member 
had  a  sufficiently  large  abode  and  was  willing  to  open  his  house 
to  the  brethren,  comparatively  large  assemblies,  including  all 
the  Christians  of  the  town  or  neighbourhood,  met  together  at 
stated  times  and  especially  on  the  Lord's  Day,  for  the  service 
of  thanksgiving.  Gains  was  able  to  accommodate  all  his  fellow 
Christians,  and  was  the  "  host  of  the  whole  Church."  ^ 

Traces  of  these  earliest  house-churches  survived  in  happier 
days.  The  ground  plan  of  the  earliest  Roman  church,  dis- 
covered in  1900  in  the  Forum  at  Rome,  is  modelled  not  on  the 
basilica  or  public  hall,  but  on  the  audience  hall  of  the  wealthy 
Roman  burgher,  and  the  recollections  of  the  familiar  surround- 
ings at  the  meetings  in    the    house-churches  probably  guided 

'  Acts  xxi.   18  ;    xii.   17. 

-  Rom.  xvi.  3-5 :  "  Salute  Piisca  and  Aquila  .  .  .  and  the  church 
that  is  in  theii-  house  "  ;  xvi.  14  :  "  Salute  Asyncritus,  Phlegon,  Hermes, 
Patrobas,  Hermas,  and  the  brethren  that  are  with  them  "  ;  15  :  "  Salute 
Philologus  and  Julia,  Nereus  and  his  sister,  and  Olymi:)as,  and  all  the 
saints  that  are  with  them  "  ;  10 :  "  Salute  them  which  are  of  the  house- 
hold of  Aristobulus  "  ;  11  :  "  Salute  them  of  the  household  of  Narcissus." 
The  groups  salut«d  in  verses  10  and  11  may  have  been  a  number  of  freed- 
men  or  slaves  belonging  to  the  households  of  the  two  wealthy  men  men- 
tioned ;  but  the  other  three  groups  are  evidently  house-churches. 

St.  Paul  sends  salutations  to  other  house-churches  ;  to  that  meeting 
in  the  house  of  Philemon  at  Colosse  (Philem.  2),  to  that  meeting  in  the 
house  of  Nymphas  in  Laodicea  (Col.  iv.  15),  and  to  that  meeting  in  the 
house  of  Stephanas  (1  Cor,  xvi.  15).  3  Rom.  xvi.  23. 


HOUSE  CHURCHES  43 

the  pencil  of  the  architect  who  first  planned  the  earliest  public 
buildings  dedicated  to  Christian  worship.'  Old  Hturgies  which 
enjoin  the  deacon,  at  the  period  of  the  service  when  the  Lord's 
Supper  is  about  to  be  celebrated,  to  command  the  mothers  to  take 
their  babies  on  their  knees,  bring  *  with  them  memories  of  these 
homely  gatherings  in  private  houses,  which  lasted  down  to  the 
close  of  the  second  century  and  probably  much  later,  except 
in  the  larger  towns.^ 

It  is  St.  Paul,  in  his  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  who  gives 
us  the  most  distinct  picture  of  the  meetings  of  the  earliest 
Christian  commmiities.     The  brethren  appear  to  have  had  three  i-' 
distinct  meetings — one  for  the  purposes  of  edification  by  prayer 
and  exhortation,  another  for  thanksgiving  which  began  with  a 

^  Compare  C.  Dehio,  Die  Genesis  der  christlichen  Basilika  in  the  Sitz- 
ensber.  d.  Munchen.  Akad.  d.  Wiss.  1882,  ii.  301  flf. 

*  In  the  so-called  Liturgy  of  St.  Clement  there  is  the  following  rubric  :  — 

"  The  order  of  James,  the  brother  of  John,  the  son  of  Zebedee. 

"  And  I  James,  the  brother  of  John,  the  son  of  Zebedee,  command  that 
forthwith  the  deacon  say, 

"  Let  none  of  the  hearers,  none  of  the  unbeUevers,  none  of  the  heterodox 
stay.  Ye  who  have  prayed  the  former  prayer,  depart.  31  others,  take  up 
your  children.  Let  us  stand  upright  to  present  unto  the  Lord  our  offer- 
ings with  fear  and  trembling."  Neale  and  Littledale,  Translations  of 
Primitive  Liturgies,  p.  75. 

The  writer  had  the  privilege  of  worshipping  in  a  house-church  in  the 
Lebanon  under  the  .shoulder  of  Sunim  in  the  autumn  of  1888.  The  long 
low  vaulted  kitchen  had  been  swept  and  garnished  for  the  occasion, 
though  some  of  the  pots  still  stood  in  a  corner.  The  congregation 
sat  on  the  floor — the  men  together  in  rows  on  the  right  and  the  women 
in  rows  on  the  left.  During  the  services  which  preceded  the  Holy  Com- 
munion, babies  crawled  about  the  floor  making  excursions  from  mother 
to  father  and  back  again.  When  the  non-communicants  had  left,  and 
the  "  elements,"  as  we  say  in  Scotland,  were  being  uncovered,  the  mothers 
secured  the  straggling  babies  and  kept  them  on  their  laps  during  the  whole 
of  the  communion  service,  as  was  enjoined  in  the  ancient  rubric  quoted 
above. 

3  The  earUest  trace  we  find  of  buildings  set  apart  exclusively  for  Chris- 
tian worship  dates  from  the  beginning  of  the  third  century  (202-210) : 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  Stromata,  vii.  5.  Clement  speaks  of  a  building 
erected  in  honour  of  God,  while  he  insists  that  it  is  the  assembly  of  the 
people  and  not  the  place  where  they  assemble  that  ought  to  be  called 
the  church. 


44     A  CHRISTIAN   CHURCH   IN   APOSTOLIC  TIMES 

common  meal  and  ended  with  the  Holy  Supper/  and  a  third 
for  the  business  of  the  little  society. 

1.  In  his  description  of  the  first  the  apostle  introduces  us 
to  an  earnest  company  of  men  and  women  full  of  restrained 
enthusiasm,  which  might  soon  become  unrestrained.  We  hear 
,'  of  no  officials  appointed  to  conduct  the  services.  The  brethren 
fill  the  body  of  the  hall,  the  women  sitting  together,  in  all  prob- 
ability on  the  one  side,  and  the  men  on  the  other  ;  behind  them 
are  the  inquirers ;  and  behind  them,  clustering  round  the  door, 
unbelievers,  whom  curiosity  or  some  other  motive  has  attracted, 
and  who  are  welcomed  to  this  meeting  "  for  the  Word." 

The  service,  and  probably  each  part  of  the  service,  began 
with  the  benediction  :  "  Grace  be  to  you  and  peace  from  God 
our  Father  and  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,"  which  was  followed  by 
an  invocation  of  Jesus  and  the  confession  that  He  is  Lord.^ 
One  of  the  brethren  began  to  pray  ;  then  another  and  another ; 
one  began  the  Lord's  Prayer,^  and  all  joined  ;  each  prayer  was 
followed  by  a  hearty  and  fervent  "  Amen."  "*  Then  a  hymn 
was  sung  ;  then  another  and  another,  for  several  of  the  brethren 

'  The  best  account  of  the  Agape  is  in  Keating's  The  Agape  and  the 
Eucharist  (1901). 

2  St.  Paul  does  not  mention  the  benediction  as  forming  part  of  the 
Christian  worship,  but  the  way  in  which  it  occurs  regularly  at  the  begin- 
ning of  his  epistles,  preserving  always  the  same  form,  warrants  us  in  sup- 
posing its  hturgical  use  in  the  manner  above  indicated.  The  invocation 
of  Jesus  as  the  Lord  is  made  the  test  of  all  Christian  pubUc  utterance  for 
edification,  and  must  have  preceded  the  prophetic  addresses  if  not  the 
whole  service :  1  Cor.  xii.  3. 

3  The  use  of  the  Lord's  prayer  is  not  mentioned  but  it  may  be  inferred. 
"  Paul  nowhere  mentions  the  Lord's  prayer.  But  we  may  assume  that 
we  have  a  trace  of  it  in  Rom.  viii.  15,  and  in  Gal.  iv.  6.  In  speaking  of 
the  right  to  call  God  Father,  he  gives  the  Aramaic  form  for  father,  in  each 
instance  adding  a  translation  ;  and  this  is  only  to  be  explained  by  sup- 
posing that  he  had  in  mind  a  formula  which  was  known  wherever  the 
Gospel  had  penetrated,  and  which,  by  preserving  the  original  language, 
invested  the  name  with  pecuUar  solemnity,  in  order  to  maintain  its  sig- 
nificance unimpaired  in  the  behever's  consciousness."  Weizsacker,  The 
Apostolic  Age,  ii.  p.  258  (Eng.  Trans.).  According  to  the  Didache  the  Lord's 
Prayer  was  to  be  said  three  times  every  day  {Did.  viii.). 

4  1  Cor.  xiv.  IG. 


THE  MEETING  FOR  EDIFICATION  45 

have  composed  or  selected  hymns  at  home  which  they  wish  to 
be  sung  by  the  congregation.^  Several  of  these  hymns  are  pre- 
served in  the  New  Testament,  and  one  is  embodied  in  one  of  our 
Scotch  paraphrases  :" — 

To  Him  be  power  divine  ascribed, 
And  endless  blessings  paid  ; 
Salvation,  glory,  joy,  remain 
For  ever  on  His  Head. 

Thou  hast  redeemed  us  Avith  Thy  Blood, 
And  set  the  prisoners  free ; 


I  1  Cor.  xiv.  26. 

^  If  it  be  permitted,  as  I  think  it  is,  to  believe  that  the  author  of  the 
Apocalypse  used  the  outUne  of  the  Christian  worship  of  the  earliest  age 
as  the  canvas  on  which  he  painted  his  glorious  prophetic  visions, 
then  we  can  disentangle  many  a  short  hymn  used  in  the  services  of  the 
apostolic  Church  and  also  get  many  a  detail  about  that  service.  The 
paraphrase  quoted  above  combines  two  of  the  songs  given  in  Revelation 
(v.  9-13).     We  have  another  in  xv.  3  f.  : — 

Great  and  marvellous  are  Thy  works, 

O  Lord  God  the  Almighty  ; 

Righteous  and  true  are  Thy  ways. 

Thou  King  of  the  Ages. 

Who  shall  not  fear  Thee,  O  Lord,  and  glorify  Thy  Name  ? 

For  Thou  only  art  Holy  ; 

All  the  Nations  shall  come  and  worship  before  Thee  ; 

For  Thy  righteous  acts  have  been  made  manifest ; 

and  yet  another  in  xi.  17  : — 

We  give  Thee  thanks,  O  Lord  God,  the  Almighty, 

Wliich  art  and  which  wast ; 

Because  Thou  hast  taken  Thy  great  power  and  didst  reign. 

And  the  Nations  were  wroth, 

And  Thy  wrath  came. 

And  the  time  of  the  dead  to  be  judged. 

And  the  time  to  give  their  reward  to  Thy  servants. 

To  the  prophets  and  to  the  saints. 

And  to  them  that  fear  Thy  Name, 

Tlie  small  and  the  great ; 

And  to  them  who  destroy  the  earth. 

It  is  likely  that  the  singing  was  antiphonal ;  there  are  alternate  strophes 
in  the  hymns  in  the  heavenly  worship,  and  Pliny  says  that  the  Christians 
"  carmen  Christo  quasi  Deo  dicere  secum  invicem  "     (Ep.  96  [97]). 


46     A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC  TIMES 

Thou  mad'st  us  kings  and  priests  to  God, 

And  we  shall  reign  with  Thee. 

***** 

To  Him  that  sits  upon  the  throne 
T'le  God  whom  we  adore, 
And  to  the  Lamb  that  once  was  slain, 
Bo  glory  evermore.' 

After  the  hymns  came  reading  from  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures, 
and  readings  or  recitations  concerning  the  life  and  death,  the 
sayings  and  deeds  of  Jesus."  Then  came  the  "  instruction  " — 
sober  words  for  edification,  based  on  what  had  been  read,  and 
coming  either  from  the  gift  of  "  wisdom,"  or  from  that  intuitive 
power  of  seeing  into  the  heart  of  spiritual  things  which  the 
apostle  calls  "  knowledge."  ^  Then  came  the  moment  of  greatest 
expectancy.  It  was  the  time  for  the  prophets,  men  who  be- 
lieved themselves  and  were  believed  by  their  brethren  to  be 
specially  taught  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  to  take  part.  They  started 
forward,  the  gifted  men,  so  eager  to  impart  what  had  been  given 
them,  that  sometimes  two  or  more  rose  at  once  and  spoke  to- 
gether ;  ^  and  sometimes  when  one  was  speaking  the  message 
came  to  another,  and  he  leapt  to  his  feet,^  increasing  the  emotion 

'  Scotch  Paraphrases,  Ixv.  7-11. 

^  St.  Paul  does  not  mention  the  reading  of  Scripture  in  his  order  of 
worship  ;  but  it  must  have  been  there.  In  his  epistles  to  the  Corinthians, 
to  confine  ourselves  to  them,  he  implies  such  a  knovvledge  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  of  deeds  and  sayings  of  Jesus  as  could  only  be  got  from 
the  continuous  public  reading  of  the  Scriptures,  and  the  reciting  sentences 
about  Jesus.  He  takes  it  for  granted  that  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures 
are  known  and  known  to  be  the  law  for  life  and  conduct,  in  1  Cor.  vi.  16  ; 
ix.  8-13  ;  xiv.  21  ;  2  Cor.  vi.  IG,  18  ;  viii.  15  ;  ix.  9.  In  the  beginning 
of  1  Cor.  XV.  he  clearly  refers  to  formal  statements,  not  yet  perhaps  com- 
mitted to  writing,  which  he  himself  had  handed  over  as  he  had  received 
them,  and  which  recited  the  facts  about  the  sayings  and  deeds  of  Jesus. 
The  opening  and  reading  from  the  book  comes  after  the  singing  in  the 
heavenly  worship  (Rev.  v.  vi.). 

3  Instruction  (St8a;^>^),  teaching  or  doctrine  includes  the  "  wisdom  "- 
and  "  knowledge "  of  1  Cor.  xii.  8  ;  "  wisdom,"  (\o-yos  cro^t'as)  is 
described  in  1  Cor.  ii.  7  ;  vi.  5  ;  and  "  knowledge  "  (Aoyos  yrwo-cws)  in 
2  Cor.  x.  5  ;  xi.  6  ;  and  perhaps  the  Tricrrts  of  1  Cor.  xii.  9,  which  may  mean 
depth  of  loj'al  spiritual  experience. 

4  1  Cor.  xiv.  31.  5  1  Cor.  siv.  30. 


THE  MEETING   FOR   EDIFICATION  47 

and  taking  from  the  edification.  When  the  prophets  were 
silent,  first  one,  then  another,  and  sometimes  two  at  once,  began 
strange  ejaculatory  prayers,'  in  sentences  so  rugged  and  dis- 
jointed that  the  audience  for  the  most  part  could  not  understand, 
and  had  to  wait  till  some  of  their  number,  who  could  follow  the 
strange  utterances,  were  ready  to  translate  them  into  intelligible 
language.-  Then  followed  the  benediction :  "  The  Grace  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  be  with  you  all "  ;  the  "  kiss  of  peace"  ;  and 
the  congregation  dispersed.  Sometimes  during  the  meeting,  at 
some  part  of  the  services,  but  oftenest  when  the  prophets  were 
speaking,  there  was  a  stir  at  the  back  of  the  room,  and  a  heathen, 
who  had  been  listening  in  careless  curiosity  or  in  barely  con- 
cealed scorn,  suddenly  felt  the  sinful  secrets  of  his  own  heart 
revealed  to  him,  and  pushing  forward  fell  down  at  the  feet  of  the 
speaker  and  made  his  confession,^  while  the  assembly  raised  the 
doxology :  "  Blessed  be  God,  the  Father  of  the  Lord  Jesus, 
for  evermore.'^    Amen." 

'  I  have  followed  Weizsacker's  conception  of  what  was  meant  by  speaking 
"  in  a  tongue."  These  things  have  to  be  noted  about  the  phenomenon. 
It  occurred  in  prayer  only  (1  Cor.  xiv.  2,  14)  ;  it  appeared  like  a  soUloquj' 
(1  Cor.  xiv.  2)  ;  the  speaker  edified  himself  (xiv.  4),  but  seems  to  have  lost 
conscious  control  over  himself  (xiv.  14)  ;  what  was  said  was  not  intelli- 
gible to  others  (xiv.  2)  ;  it  could  be  compared  to  the  sound  of  a  trumpet 
which  gave  no  clear  call  (xiv.  7,  8) ;  or  to  the  use  of  a  foreign  and  bar- 
barous language  (xiv.  10,  11)  ;  the  speaker  in  a  tongue  ought  to  interpret 
what  he  has  said,  and  that  he  may  be  able  to  do  this  he  ought  to  pray 
for  divine  assistance  (xiv.  13)  ;  that  such  speaking  was  not  all  of  one  soi  t 
— there  were  "  kinds  of  tongues  '•'  (xii.  10).  Upon  the  whole  then  we  may 
conceive  it  to  have  been  rapt  ejaculatory  prayer  uttered  during  unre- 
strained emotion,  where  words  often  took  the  place  of  sentences.  This 
enables  us  to  see  how  brethren,  who  were  sympathetic  enough,  could 
follow  the  obscure  windings  of  thought  and  expression,  and  interpret. 
Our  knowledge  is  exclusively  derived  from  1  Cor.  xiv.  ;  the  two  passages 
in  Acts  X.  46  ;  xix.  6,  and  the  references  in  the  post-apostolic  period  do 
not  enlighten  us.  Compare  Heinrici,  Das  Erste  Sendschreiben  an  die 
KorintUer,  pp.  376-393  ;  Bleek,  Studien  n.  Kritiken  (1829),  pp.  3-79  ; 
Hilgenfeld,  Die  Glossolalie  in  der  alien  Kirclie,  Leipzig,  1850.  This  "  gift  " 
of  tongues  is  referred  to  by  Irenaeus,  v.  6,  and  TertuUian,  Adv.  Marcion, 
V.  8.  2  1  coj,  xiv.  27,  28.  3  i  Cor.  xiv.  25. 

4  The  other  form  of  doxology  common  to  St.  Paul's  epistles  is  "  Unto 


48     A   CHRISTIAN   CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC  TIMES 

Such  was  a  Christian  meeting  for  pubHc  worship  in  Corinth 
in  apostohc  times  ;  and  foreign  as  it  may  seem  to  us,  the  Uke 
can  be  still  seen  in  mission  fields  among  the  hot-blooded  people 
of  the  East.  I  have  witnessed  everything  but  the  speaking 
"  with  tongues  "  in  meetings  of  native  Christians  in  the  Deccan 
in  India,  when  European  influence  was  not  present  to  restrain 
Eastern  enthusiasm  and  condense  it  in  Western  moulds. 

The  meeting  described  by  the  apostle  is  not  to  be  taken  as 
something  which  might  be  seen  in  Corinth  but  was  peculiar 
to  that  city  ;  it  may  be  taken  as  a  type  of  the  Christian  meeting 
throughout  the  Gentile  Christian  Churches  ;  for  the  Apostle, 
in  his  suggestions  and  criticisms,  continually  speaks  of  what 
took  place  throughout  all  the  churches.'' 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  if  the  apostle  finds  fault  with  some 
things,  he  gives  the  order  of  the  service  and  expressly  approves 
of  every  part  of  it,  even  of  the  strange  ejaculatory  prayers.^  He 
gives  his  Corinthian  converts  one  broad  principle,  which  he  ex- 
pects them  to  apply  for  themselves  in  order  to  better  their  service. 
Everything  is  to  be  done  for  the  edification  of  the  brethren,  and 
the  first  quahfication  for  edification  is  that  all  things  be  done 
"  decently  and  in  order,"  for  God  is  not  a  God  of  confusion  but 
of  peace. ^  He  gives  examples  of  his  principle.  The  prophets 
were  to  restrain  themselves  ;  they  were  to  speak  one  at  a  time, 
and  not  more  than  two  or  three  at  one  meeting  ;  '^  and  those 
who  prayed  "  in  tongues  "  were  to  keep  silence  altogether  unless 
some  one  who  could  interpret  was  present,  for  it  is  better  to 
speak  five  words  with  understanding  than  ten  thousand  in  a 
tongue.     The  women  too  who  had  the  gift  of  prophecy  were  to 

God  our  Father,  be  glory  for  ever,  Amen."  These  doxologies  ai'e  found 
running  through  St.  Paul's  and  other  epistles  in  the  New  Testament. 
They  are  used  to  end  a  prophetic  utterance,  or  an  exposition  of  divine 
wisdom,  and  they  occur  in  the  description  of  the  heavenly  worship  in  the 
Apocalypse.  '  1  Cor.  xiv.  33  ;   xi.  16. 

2  1  Cor.  xiv.  39.  The  order  of  service  is  given  by  St.  Paul  in  1  Cor. 
xiv.  26  ;  where  the  "  psalm  "  includes  the  supplication  and  thanksgiving 
of  xiv.  15.  3  1  Cor.  xiv.  33,  40.  4  1  Cor.  xiv.  29-33. 


THE  MEETING  FOR  EDIFICATION  49 

use  it  in  private,  and  not  start  forward  at  the  public  meeting 
and  deliver  their  message  there.  So  far  from  finding  fault 
with  the  kind  of  meeting  described,  St.  Paul  seems  to  look  on  the 
manifestation  of  these  gifts  of  praise,  prayer,  teaching,  and 
prophecy,  within  the  congregation  at  Corinth,  as  an  evidence 
that  the  Christian  community  there  was  completely  furnished 
within  its  own  membership  with  all  the  gifts  needed  for  the 
building  up  in  faith  and  works.' 

What  cannot  fail  to  strike  us  in  this  picture  is  the  untram- 
melled liberty  of  the  worship,  the  possibility  of  every  male 
member  of  the  congregation  taking  part  in  the  prayers  and  the 
exhortations,  and  the  consequent  responsibility  laid  on  the 
whole  comniunity  to  see  that  the  service  was  for  the  edification 
of  all.  When  we  consider  the  rebukes  that  the  apostle  considered 
it  necessary  to  administer,  it  is  also  somewhat  surprising  to  find 
so  few  injunctions  which  take  the  form  of  definite  rules  for 
public  worship,  and  to  observe  the  confidence  which  the  apostle 
had  that  if  certain  broad  principles  were  laid  down  and  observed, 
the  community  was  of  itself  able  to  conduct  all  things  with  that 
attention  to  decency  and  order  which  ensured  edification. 

Our  wonder  is  apt  to  be  increased  when  we  remember  the  social 
surroundings  and  conditions  of  these  Corinthian  Christians. 
They  were  a  number  of  burghers,  freedmen  and  slaves,  who, 
as  their  names  show,  were  mostly  of  Roman  origin,  gathered 
from  the  wealthiest  and  most  profligate  city  on  the  Mediter- 
ranean. The  population  of  Corinth  was  as  mixed  as  that  of 
Alexandria.  At  Cenchrea,  on  the  eastern  shore  of  the  isthmus, 
the  wealth  of  Asia  and  Egypt  poured  in,  and  was  sent  off  to 
Rome  and  Italy  from  Lechaeum,  the  western  harbour.  The 
flow  of  commerce  brought  with  it  the  peoples,  religions  and  habits 
of  all  lands.  The  religion  of  the  city  was  a  strange  medley  of 
cults  Eastern  and  Western.  Aphrodite  and  Astarte,  Isis  and 
Cybele,  were  among  her  deities ;  Romans,  Jews,  Egyptians 
and  Phoenicians  among  her  people.  The  famihar  illustrations 
'  1  Cor.  xii.  4  ff. :   cf.  Eph.  iv.  10. 

CM  4 


50     A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC    TIMES 

which  the  apostle  uses  in  his  epistles  indicate  the  habits  of  the 
population.  He  speaks  of  the  arena  and  the  wild-beast  fights/ 
of  the  theatre,^  of  the  boxing  match  and  the  stadium  race,^ 
of  the  great  idol-feasts  and  processions.'^  The  city,  we  know, 
was  honeycombed  with  "  gilds  " — religious  corporations  for 
the  practices  of  the  Eastern  religions,  and  trades  unions  for  the 
artizans  and  the  seamen.  The  Christian  society  was  gathered 
from  all  classes  ;  from  the  poor  and  the  slaves,^  from  the  well- 
to-do  hke  the  city  treasurer,^  and  an  elder  from  the  Jewish 
Synagogue  ;  ^  it  included  ladies  of  rank  hke  Chloe,^  and  men  of 
abounding  wealth  like  Gaius.^  It  was  this  heterogenous  society, 
including  so  many  jarring  elements,  that  the  apostle  expected 
to  develop  into  an  orderly  Church  of  Christ  in  virtue  of  the 
"  gifts  "  of  the  Spirit  implanted  within  it. 

2.  It  is  by  no  means  so  easy  to  get  a  clear  picture  of  the  second 
meeting  of  the  Christian  community — the  meeting  for  thanks- 
giving—as it  is  to  see  what  the  meeting  for  edification  was  like." 
With  the  latter  we  have  only  to  remove  the  blemishes  which  the 
apostle  found,  and  the  vision  of  the  meeting  as  he  approved  of 
it  stands  clearly  before  us.     But  the  abuses  which  had  corrupted 

^  1  Cor.  XV.  32.  2  1  Cor.  iv.  9  ;  vii.  31.  3  1  Cor.  ix.  24-27. 

4  1  Cor.  viii.  10.  5  1  Cor.  i.  26.  ^  Erastus,  Rom.  xvi.  23. 

7  Crispus,  Acts  xviii.  8  ;    1  Cor.  i.  14.  ^  1  Cor.  i.  11. 

9  Rom.  xvi.  23  ;    1  Cor.  i.  14. 

'°  It  is  strange  that,  apart  from  the  descriptions  of  the  Last  Supper 
in  the  Synoptic  Gospels  (and  for  obvious  reasons  they  cannot  be  taken 
as  descriptions  of  the  way  in  which  the  Eucharistic  service  Mas  celebrated 
in  the  ApostoUc  and  post- Apostolic  Church),  we  have  no  very  clear  account 
of  how  the  Service  of  Thanksgiving  was  observed  among  the  primitive 
Christians  till  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  when  we  have  the  state- 
ment of  Justin  Martyr  in  his  Apology,  i.  67.  The  earliest  account,  so 
far  as  I  know,  which  gives  as  full  a  description  of  the  Holy  Commvmion 
as  we  have  of  the  meeting  for  exhortation  in  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians, is  to  be  found  in  the  Canons  of  Hippolytns  (Gebhardt  and  Har- 
nack,  Texte  u.  Untersuchungen,  VI.  iv.  pp.  118-22).  Yet  the  whole  line 
of  the  history  of  worship,  of  the  organization  of  the  local  churches,  and 
of  the  administration  of  ecclesiastical  property  follows  the  development 
of  this  part  of  the  public  worship  of  the  Church.  We  can  leain  many 
details,  but  we  have  no  complete  account.     In  the  account  of  the  Last 


THE  MEETING   FOR  THANKSGIVING  51 

the  meeting  for  thanksgiving  had  so  changed  it,  from  what  it 
ought  to  have  been,  that  it  could  not  serve  what  it  was  meant 
to  do.     The  framework  of  the  degenerate  meeting  and  of  the 
same  gathering  re-organized  according  to  the  apostle's  directions 
can  easily  be  traced.     The  members  of  the  Christian  commumty 
in  Corinth  assembled  together  in  one  place,  where  they  ate 
together  a   meal  which  they   themselves  provided ;  and  this 
meeting  ended  with  the  celebration  of  the  Lord's  Supper.     The 
Holy  Supper  was  the  essential  part.     The  common  meal  and 
what  belonged  to  it  were  accessories,  the  casket  to  contain  the 
one  precious  jewel,  the  body  to  be  vivified  by  this  soul.     It 
was  the  Holy  Supper  that  really  brought  them  together  ;  but 
their  conduct  had  made  it  impossible  for  them  to  be  the  Lord^s 
guests  at  His  Table.^    The  apostle  tells  the  Corinthians  that  their 
meeting  could  not  be  a  Lord's  Supper  nor  even  a  love-feast 
if  each  ate  his  own  meal  and  one  was  hungry,  while  another 
drank  his  fill.'    The  common  meal  showed  that  all  the  bretliren 
belonged  to  one  living  organism  which  was  the  Church  in  Corinth, 
of  which  the  Lord  was  the  Head.     Nothing  could  so  wound 
this  thought  as  making  the  distinctions  between  rich  and  poor, 
which  had  been  done.     It  banished  the  whole  idea  of  fellow- 
ship, and  sensuality  was  introduced  where,  above  all  places, 
it  ought  to  have  been  absent.^    God  had  manifested  His  dis- 
pleasure by  sending  sickness  and  death  into  the  congregation.^ 
The  apostle  lays  down  a  general  principle,  and  gives  instances 
of  its  application,  which  if  followed  out  will  make  the  common 
meal  a  fitting  introduction  to  the  Holy  Supper,  and  then  shows 
how  the  Lord's  Supper  itself  is  to  be  solemnly  and  fitly  cele- 

Supper,  here  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  in  the  Didache  (x.  1)  in  the 
descxiplion  of  PUny,  in  Clement  of  Alex.  [Paida'jogos,  u.  I)  »\  g^^^^^^^ 
{Ad  Lyrnos,  viii.),  the  celebration  follows  a  common  meal;  in  Justin 
It  takes  place  during  the  meeting  for  exhortation  ;  m  the  Cano^lf^J: 
polytus,  the  meeting  for  exhortation,  the  Holy  Commumon,  and  the  Lo>d  s 
day  common  meal  are  all  separate  from  each  other. 

I  1  Cor.  xi.  20.  2  1  Cor.  xi.  21. 

3  1  Cor.  xi.  22.  *  1  Cor.  xi.  30-32. 


52     A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC   TIMES 

brated  according  to  the  commands  of  Jesus.  If  we  take  the 
principles  which  the  apostle  lays  down  and  suggestions  from  other 
portions  of  the  New  Testament,  with  those  which  come  from 
the  earliest  post-apostolic  descriptions  of  similar  meetings,  we 
may  perhaps  venture  to  reconstruct  the  scene. 

The  apostle  shows  that  this  meeting  for  thanksgiving  is  to  be 
a  social  meal  representing  the  fellowship  which  subsists  between 
all  the  members  of  the  brotherhood,  because  they  have  each  a 
personal  fellowship  with  their  Lord.  They  are  therefore  to 
eat  all  together,  and  if  anyone  is  too  hungry  to  wait  for  his 
neighbours  he  ought  to  eat  at  home.  It  is  also  to  be  a  fitting 
introduction  for  the  Lord's  Supper,  which  both  symbolises 
and  imparts  that  personal  fellowship  with  Christ  which  is  the 
permanent  basis  of  their  fellowship  with  each  other.  This 
thought  that  the  Holy  Supper  is  to  come  at  the  end  of  it  must 
dominate  the  meeting  during  its  entire  duration.  From  be- 
ginning to  end  the  brethren  are  at  the  Lord's  Table  and  are 
His  guests. 

The  whole  membership  of  the  Church  at  Corinth  met  together 
at  one  place  on  a  fixed  day,  the  Lord's  day,^  for  their  Thanks- 
giving Meeting.  The  meeting  was  confined  to  the  member- 
ship ;  even  catechumens,  as  well  as  inquirers  and  unbelievers, 
were  excluded.  The  partakers  brought  provisions,  accord- 
ing to  their  abihty.  Some  of  the  brethren,  who  belonged  to 
that  honoured  number  who  were  recognized  to  have  the  prophetic 
gift,  presided."  The  food  brought  was  handed  over  to  them, 
and  they  distributed  so  that  the  superfluity  of  the  rich  made 
up  for  the  lack  of  the  poor.  They  also  conducted  the  devo- 
tional services  at  the  feast  and  at  the  Holy  Supper  which  fol- 
lowed. The  presidents  began  with  prayers  of  thanksgiving 
for  the  food  prepared  for  them  and  before  them ;  ^  it  was  an 

^  The  Lord's  day  :  Acts  xx.  7  ;  Didaclic,  xiv.  1  ;  Canons  of  Hijypolytus 
(Texte  u.  Utitersuclningen,  VI.  iv.  p.  105,  cf.  p.  183  n.). 

^  Didache,  x. 

3  The  beautiful  prayer  given  in  the  Didache  ia  (x.) :  "  We  thank  Thee, 
Holy  Father,  for  Thy  holy  name,  which  Thou  hast  caused  to  dwell  in  our 


THE   MEETING   FOR  THANKSGIVINa  53 

evidence  of  the  bounty  of  God  the  Creator  ;  a  pledge  of  His 
fellowship  with  them  His  creatures  ;  a  warrant  for  their  con- 
tinuous trust  in  His  Fatherly  care  and  providence ;  and  a  sug- 
gestion of  the  bounties  of  His  redemption  which  were  more 
fully  symbolised  in  the  Holy  Supper  which  followed.^  During 
the  feast  the  brethren  were  taught  to  regard  themselves  as  in 
God's  presence  and  His  guests ;  but  this  did  not  hinder  a  pre- 
vaiUng  sense  of  gladness,  nor  prevent  them  satisfying  their 
hunger  and  their  thirst ;  God  the  creator  had  placed  the  food 
and  drink  before  them  for  that  purpose.^    It  did  prevent  all 

hearts,  and  for  the  knowledge  and  faith  and  immortality  which  Thou  hast 
made  kno^vn  to  us  through  Jesus  Thy  Servant ;  to  Thee  be  the  glory 
for  ever.  Thou,  Lord  Almighty,  didst  create  all  things  for  Thy  Name's 
sake,  both  food  and  drink  Thou  didst  give  to  men  for  enjoyment,  in  order 
that  they  might  give  thanks  to  Thee  ;  but  to  us  Thou  hast  graciously 
given  spiritual  food  and  drink  and  eternal  life  through  Tliy  Servant; 
Before  all  things  we  thank  Thee  that  Thou  art  Mighty  ;  to  Thee  be  the  glory 
for  ever.  Remember  Thy  Church,  Lord,  to  deliver  it  from  every  evil  and 
to  make  it  perfect  in  Thy  Love,  and  gather  it  from  the  four  A\dnds,  the 
sanctified,  into  Thy  Kingdom.  Let  Grace  come  and  let  this  world 
pass  away.  Hosanna  to  the  Son  of  David.  Whoever  is  holy,  let  him 
come ;  whoever  is  not  let  him  depart.  Maranatha.  Amen."  This 
prayer  was  to  be  said  at  the  dose  of  the  feast.  "  Now  after  ye  are  filled 
thus  do  ye  give  thanks  "-  is  the  introductory  sentence.  It  is  also  to  be 
remembered  that  when  prophets  conducted  the  love-feast  they  were 
not  confined  to  prescribed  prayers.  "  Permit  the  prophets  to  give  thanks 
as  much  as  they  will."- 

'  The  common  meals  which  our  Lord  shared  with  His  disciples  were 
always  looked  upon  as  showing  His  intimate  fellowship  with  them,  and 
spiritual  associations  clustering  round  the  thought  were  enhanced  by  His 
frequent  comparison  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  to  a  common  meal  (Matt, 
xxii.  4  ;  Luke  xiv.  15  f.  ;  Luke  xxii.  30  ;  cf.  Rev.  iii.  20).  Those  who  had 
sat  at  meat  with  Him  supposed  that  they  had  a  claim  upon  Him  (Luke 
xiii.  26) ;  while  the  miraculous  feeding  was  a  picture  of  the  providence 
of  God  which  ought  to  awaken  our  continuous  trust  in  Him.  There  are 
evidences  of  all  these  thoughts. 

2  The  note  of  gladness  is  always  marked.  The  brethren  in  the  primitive 
Church  at  Jerusalem  "  breaking  bread  at  home,  did  eat  witli  gladness 
and  singleness  of  heart."  Acts  ii.  46 ;  cf.  Acts  xxvii.  33-35.  "  Both 
food  and  drink  Tiiou  didst  give  to  man  for  enjoyment,  in  order  that  they 
might  giv^e  thanks  to  Thee,"  Didache,  x.  "  Edant  bibantque  ad  satietatem, 
neque  vero  ad  ebrietatem  ;  sed  in  divina  praesentia  cum  laude  Dei,"  Canons 
of  Hippolytus  (Texte  u.  Untersiichungen,  VI.  iv.  p.  107). 


54     A  CHEISTIAN   CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC  TIMES 

unseemly  behaviour,  all  unbrotlierly  conduct  in  speech  or  action, 
and  it  insisted  on  the  absence  of  all  who  were  at  variance  with 
their  neighbours  until  the  quarrel  had  been  put  an  end  to.^ 
During  the  feast  hymns  were  sung  at  intervals,  and  probably 
short  exhortations  were  given  by  the  prophets.^  Then  when 
all  was  decently  finished  the  Holy  Communion  was  solemnly 
celebrated  as  commanded  by  the  apostle. 

3.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  apostle  regarded  the 
community  of  Christians  at  Corinth  as  something  more  than  a 
society  for  performing  together  acts  of  public  worship,  whether 
eucharistic  or  for  prayer,  praise  and  exhortation.  It  was  a  little 
self-governing  republic.  This  made  the  third  kind  of  meet- 
ing necessary.  The  common  worship  of  the  society,  especially 
the  eucharistic  service,  united  it  with  the  whole  brotherhood  of 
believers  throughout  the  world,  and  showed  it  to  be  in  the 


^  "  But  every  one  that  hath  controversy  with  his  friend  let  him  not 
come  together  with,  you  until  they  be  reconciled,"  Didache,  xiv.  In  the 
s^iecial  "  Lord's  day  "  love-feast  which  may  be  given  to  the  poor,  as  set 
forth  in  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  it  is  said :  "  Ne  quis  niultum  loquatur 
neve  clamet,  ne  forte  vos  irrideant,  neve  sint  scandalo  hominibus,  ita  ut 
in  contumeliam  vertatur  qui  vos  invitavit,  cum  appareat,  vos  a  bono 
ordine  aberrare  "  {Texte,  etc.  VI.  iv.  p.  108).  These  love-feasts  naturally 
became  the  means  of  helping  the  poor  attached  to  the  Christian  congre- 
gations, as  we  can  see  in  the  primitive  Church  at  Jerusalem  (Acts  vi.  1,  2), 
and  from  such  ancient  ecclesiastical  manuals  as  the  Canons  of  Hippolyhcs. 
Gentile  Christians  had  been  accustomed  to  pagan  banquets  and  the  more 
modest  common  meals  of  the  "  gilds,"  and  could  the  more  readily  accom- 
modate themselves  to  the  Christian  observance,  but  this  familiarity  with 
the  heatlicn  usages  would  the  more  readily  lead  to  such  corruptions  as 
St.  Paul  censures  in  the  Corinthian  Church.  Cf.  W.  Liebenam,  Zur 
Geschichte  u.  Organisation  des  Romischen  Vereinswesens,  pp.  260-264. 
Liebenam  thinks  that  the  evidence  goes  to  prove  that  the  eating  at  these 
common  meals  of  the  confraternities  v/as  for  the  most  part  frugal  and  that 
the  excess  arose  from  over-drinking.  He  and  Foucart  (Des  associations 
religicuses  cliez  les  Orecs,  p.  L53  if.)  have  collected  the  evidence.  The  ex- 
cesses at  Corinth  arose  from  the  pagan  associations  connected  either  with 
these  common  meals  of  the  contraternities  or  more  probably  with  the 
temple  banquets  (1  Cor.  x.  14-22). 

"  "  Psalmos  recitent,  antequam  recedant,"  Can.  Hipp.  {Texte,  VI.  iv. 
106). 


THE  CONGREGATIONAL   MEETING  55 

succession  from  the  ancient  people  of  God  ;  '  but  it  had  a  cor- 
porate unity  of  its  own  which  manifested  itself  in  actions  for 
which  the  whole  body  of  the  Corinthian  believers  were  respon- 
sible. This  local  unity  took  shape  in  the  meeting  of  the  congre- 
gation which  is  expressly  called  the  "  Church  "  ^  by  the  apostle, 
at  which  all  the  members  apparently  had  the  right  of  appearing 
and  taking  part  in  the  discussion  and  voting — women  at  first 
as  well  as  men. 

This  meeting  had  charge  of  the  discipline  of  the  congregation 
and  of  the  fraternal  relations  between  the  community  and  other 
Christian  communities.  Letters  seeking  apostolic  advice  were 
prepared  and  dispatched  in  its  name ;  ^  it  appointed  delegates 
to  represent  the  church  and  gave  them  letters  of  commendation/ 
and  in  all  probability  it  took  charge  of  the  money  gathered  in 
the  great  collection  for  the  poor  saints  at  Jerusalem.  ^  The  whole 
administration  of  the  external  affairs  of  the  congregation  was 
under  its  control ;  and  this  was  a  work  of  very  great  import- 
ance, because  it  was  this  fraternal  intercourse  that  made  visible 
the  essential  unity  of  the  whole  Church  of  Christ. 

It  exercised  the  same  complete  control  over  the  internal 
administration  of  the  affairs  of  the  congregation.  It  expelled 
unworthy  members  ;  ^  it  deliberated  upon  and  came  to  con- 
clusions about  the  restoration  of  brethren  who  had  fallen  away 
and  showed  signs  of  repentance.^  It  arrived  at  its  decisions 
when  necessary  by  voting,  and  the  vote  of  the  majority  decided 
the  case.^  We  hear  nothing  in  the  epistles  of  a  common  congre- 
gational fund  for  purposes  common  to  the  brethren  ;  if  such 
existed  it  was  probably  under  the  care  of  this  meeting  also. 

All  these  things  implied  independent  self-government ;  and 
the  apostle  asks  the  brethren  to  undertake  another  task  which 
shows  even  more  clearly  how  independent  and  autonomous  he 

I  1  Cor.  X.  1-4.  2  1  Cor.  xiv.  19,  34,  35  ;   xi.  18. 

3  1  Cor.  vii.  1.  The  epistle  known  as  the  First  Epistle  of  Clement  begins  : 
"  The  Church  of  Rome  to  the  Church  of  Corinth,  elect  and  consecrate, 
greeting."  4  2  Cor.  iii.  1,  2 ;    viii.  19.  5  1  Cor.  xvi.  1-2. 

6  1  Cor.  V.  1-8.  7  2  Cor.  ii.  6-9.  »  2  Cor.  ii.  G, 


56     A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC  TIMES 

expected  the  congregation  to  be.  He  censured  Christians  for 
bringing  their  fellow-believers  before  the  ordinary  law-courts 
should  disputes  arise  between  brethren ;  he  urged  that  such 
matters  should  be  settled  within  the  congregation.  He  used 
stronger  language  about  this  than  about  any  other  side  of  the 
practical  expression  of  their  religious  life.  "  Dare  any  of  you," 
he  says,  "  having  a  matter  against  his  neighbour,  go  to  law 
before  the  unrighteous,  and  not  before  the  saints  ?  "  '  To 
grasp  the  full  significance  of  his  meaning  we  must  remember 
that  the  apostle  is  speaking  to  men  living  in  the  busiest  com- 
mercial city  of  the  age,  and  to  a  little  community  within  it 
which  included  city  officials,  merchants,  and  artizans,  as  well 
as  slaves.  He  is  not  addressing  men  belonging  to  a  small  rural 
village  where  life  is  simple  and  the  occasions  of  dispute  few  and 
mainly  personal.  The  Christians  of  Corinth  lived  in  the  grasp 
of  a  highly  artificial  and  complicated  commercial  life,  where 
the  complexity  of  affairs  offered  any  number  of  points  at  which 
differences  of  opinion    might    honestly  arise  between  brethren 

'  1  Cor.  vi.  1.  This  advice  of  St.  Paul  passed  into  the  ecclesiastical 
legislation  of  the  primitive  Church.  We  read  in  the  Apostolic  Con- 
stUidions  (II.  xlvi.  xlvii.  xlviii.  xlix.) :  "  Let  not  therefore  the  heathen 
know  of  your  differences  among  one  another,  nor  do  you  receive  unbe- 
lievers as  witnesses  against  yourselves,  nor  be  judged  by  them  .  .  .  but 
render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's  ...  as  tribute,  taxes 
or  poll-money.  .  .  .  Let  your  judicatures  be  held  on  the  second  day 
of  the  week,  that  if  any  controversy  arise  about  your  sentence,  having 
an  interval  till  the  Sabbath,  you  may  be  able  to  set  the  controversy  right 
and  to  reduce  those  to  peace  who  have  the  contests  one  wth  another 
before  the  Lord's  day.  Let  the  deacons  and  the  elders  be  present  at  your 
judicatures,  to  judge  without  acceptance  of  persons,  as  men  of  God  with 
clear  conscience.  .  .  .  Do  not  pass  the  same  sentence  for  every  sin, 
but  one  suitable  to  each  crime,  distinguishing  all  the  several  sorts  of  of- 
fences with  much  prudence,  the  great  from  the  little.  Treat  a  wicked  action 
after  one  manner,  and  a  wicked  word  after  another  ;  a  bare  intention 
still  otherwise  .  .  .  Some  thou  shalt  curb  with  threatenings  only ; 
some  thou  shalt  punish  with  fines  to  the  poor ;  some  thou  shalt  mortify 
with  fastings  ;  others  shalt  thou  separate  according  to  the  greatness 
of  tlieir  several  crimes.  .  .  .  When  the  parties  are  both  present  (for 
we  will  not  call  them  brethren  until  they  receive  each  other  in  peace) 
examine  diligently  concerning  those  who  appear  before  you.    ,    .    ." 


THE  CONCtRECtATIONAL   MEETING  57 

related  as  masters  and  servants,  buyers  and  sellers,  traders 
and  carriers.  It  was  men  living  in  these  surroundings  whom  the 
apostle  ordered  to  abstain  from  going  before  the  ordinary  law 
courts  for  the  purpose  of  settling  disputes  which  might  arise 
between  them,  and  whom  he  commanded  to  create  tribunals 
within  the  community  before  which  they  were  to  bring  all 
differences.  Have  they  not  one  single  "wise  man,"  he  asks, 
among  them  who  could  act  as  judge  ?  '  We  are  apt  to  forget 
that  Christianity  came  to  establish  a  new  social  living  as  well 
as  a  religion,  and  that  from  the  first  it  demanded  that  all  the 
relations  between  man  and  man  ought  to  be  regulated  on  Chris- 
tian principles.  That  means  now  that  our  national  laws  ought 
to  conform  to  the  principles  of  the  Gospel ;  it  meant  then  that 
all  disputes  were  to  be  settled  within  the  Christian  community, 
and  that  nothing  was  to  be  taken  before  the  heathen  tribunals.  __ 

Such  is  the  picture  of  a  Christian  church  in  the  Apostolic 
age,  as  it  appears  in  the  pages  of  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  to  the 
Corinthians,  and,  although  no  such  clear  outline  is  given  us  of 
any  other  Christian  community,  still  we  are  warranted,  as  we 
shall  see,  in  assuming  that  the  Church  in  Corinth  did  not  differ 
much  from  the  other  churches  which  came  into  being  through 
the  mission  work  of  the  great  apostle  to  the  Gentiles.'     We 
see  a  little  self-governing  republic— a  tiny  island  in  a  sea  of 
surrounding    paganism— with    an    active,    eager,    enthusiastic 
life  of  its  own.     It  has  its  meetings  for  edification,  open  to  all 
who  care  to  attend,   where  the  conversions  are  made  which 
multiply  the  little  community  ;  its  quieter  meetings  for  thanks- 
giving, where  none  but  the  believing  brethren  assemble,  and 
where  the  common  meal  enshrines  the  Holy  Supper  as  the  com- 
mon  fellowship   among   the   brethren   embodies   the    personal 
but  not  sohtary  fellowship  which  each  believer  has  with  the 
Redeemer ;  its  business  meetings  where  it  rules  its  members 

'  1  Cor.  vi.  5.  TT  •     •  •    r> 

^  Compare  Weizsacker's  The  Apostolic  Age,  ii.  246-290.     Heinnci,  Das 
Erste  Sendschreibm  des  Apostels  Paulas  an  die  Korinthier,  passim. 


58     A   CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN   APOSTOLIC   TIMES 

in  the  true  democratic  fashion  of  a  little  village  republic,  and 
attaches  itself  to  other  brotherhoods  who  share  the  same  faith 
and  hope,  trust  in  and  live  for  the  same  Saviour,  and  have 
things  in  common  in  this  world  as  well  as  beyond  it.  The 
meeting  for  thanksgiving  represents  the  centre  of  spiritual 
repose,  the  quiet  source  of  active  life  and  service ;  the  meeting 
for  edification,  the  enthusiastic,  eager,  aggressive  side  of  the  life 
and  work ;  and  the  business  meeting,  the  deliberative  and 
practical  action  of  men  who  recognize  that  they  are  in  the 
.     world  though  not  of  it. 

We  can  see  our  brethren  in  the  faith  living,  loving,  working 
together,  quarrelling  and  making  it  up  again,  across  these  long 
centuries,  and  all  very  human  as  we  are. 

The  evidence  for  the  independence  and  self-government  of 
the  churches  to  which  St.  Paul  addressed  his  epistles  is  so  over- 
whelming that  it  is  impossible  even  to  imagine  the  presence 
within  them  of  any  ecclesiastical  authority  with  an  origin  and 
power  independent  of  the  assembly  of  the  congregation,  and  the 
apostle  does  not  make  the  slightest  allusion  to  any  such  govern- 
ing or  controlling  authority,  whether  vested  in  one  man  or  in  a 
group  of  men.  The  apostle  was  so  filled  with  the  sense  of  high 
rank  to  which  all  Christians  are  raised  in  being  called  to  be 
"  sons  of  God  "  through  Jesus  Christ,  that  in  his  view  this 
sublime  position  makes  all  believers  of  equal  standing  no  matter 
with  what  spiritual  gifts  and  natural  abilities  particular  in- 
dividuals may  be  endowed.'  It  was  a  natural  and  practical 
consequence  of  this  thought  that  all  believers  should  share 
the  responsibilities  of  control  in  the  community  to  which  they 
belonged.  So  we  find  it  as  a  matter  of  fact  in  the  churches 
to  which  St.  Paul  addressed  his  epistles.  He  did  not  write  to 
ecclesiastical  persons  to  whom  the  brethren  owed  obedience 
as  to  an  authority  different  from,  and  superior  to,  the  assembly 
of  the  congregation.  He  addressed  his  letters  to  the  whole 
community,  who,  in  his  eyes,  are  responsible  for  the  progress 
»  Gal.  iii.  26-28  ;    cf.  1  Cor.  xii.  xiii. 


THE   MINISTRY  59 

and  good  behaviour  as  for  the  misdeeds  and  decUne  of  the 
society  and  of  individual  Christians  within  it.  His  letters  are 
quite  consistent  with  the  existence  of  ministering  officials  who 
owe  their  position  to  the  assembly  and  are  responsible  in  the 
last  resort  to  it ;  but  they  are  not  consistent  with  the  existence 
within  the  community  of  any  authority  whose  power  comes 
directly  from  a  source  outside  the  brotherhood. 

In  his  letters  to  the  Church  at  Corinth,  the  apostle  makes 
scant  allusion  to  office-bearers  of  any  kind.  The  meeting  of 
the  congregation  is  the  one  thing  which  gathers  up  the  unity 
of  administration  within  the  community.  The  apostle  appears 
to  acquiesce  in  this  state  of  matters,  unless  we  consider  the  query 
as  to  whether  there  are  no  wise  men  within  the  society  who  can 
settle  disputes  within  the  brotherhood  to  be  a  suggestion  that 
some  kind  of  recognized  officials  are  needed  for  the  furtherance 
of  the  orderly  life  of  the  local  church.  In  verses  3-15  of  the 
last  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  whether  these  be  a 
short  letter  addressed  to  the  Church  at  Ephesus,  as  some  think, 
or  whether  they  be  an  integral  part  of  the  letter  to  "  all  that  be 
in  Rome,  beloved  of  C4od,  called  to  be  saints,"  the  apostle  ad- 
dresses Christians  who  appear  to  be  living  in  an  even  less  or- 
ganized condition  of  Christian  fellowship.  They  form  a  unity 
because  of  their  common  faith  and  love  ;  but  that  unity  does 
not  appear  to  find  expression  even  in  one  common  congregational 
meeting.  Little  companies,  to  whom  the  apostle  unhesitatingly 
gives  the  name  of  "  churches,"  have  gathered  round  prominent 
persons  who  appear  to  have  been  the  first  converts,  or  those  who 
had  placed  their  houses  at  the  disposal  of  the  brethren  for  hold- 
ing meetings  for  worship,  or  those  who  had  voluntarily  done 
special  services  to  their  fellow  believers.  The  same  condition 
of  things  is  to  be  found  at  Colosse  and  at  Laodicea.  The  apostle 
sends  greetings  to  persons  of  different  sexes  and  positions  in 
life,  but  never  to  office-bearers  as  such.  Nor  among  his  many 
exhortations  does  he  allude  to  the  need  of  organization  under 
hierarchical  authority,  still  less  does  he  prescribe  a  form  of 


60     A   CHRISTIAN  CHURCH   IN  APOSTOLIC   TIMES 

organization  which  was  to  be  uniform  throughout  the  whole 
Church  of  Christ. 

We  do,  however,  find  traces  of  an  organization  within  the 
Christian  communities,  if  we  use  the  word  in  the  most  general 
way,  in  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul.  The  meeting  of  the  congre- 
gation is  almost  as  prominent  in  the  Church  of  the  Thessa- 
lonians  as  it  is  at  Corinth  ;  it  exercises  discipline  ;  '  it  selects 
faithful  men  to  accompany  the  apostle  to  Jerusalem  with  the 
money  brought  together  in  the  great  collection  ;  ^  it  evidently 
has  all  administrative  powers  in  its  hands.  But  besides  this, 
we  hear  of  men  who  are  called  "  those  who  are  over  you  in 
the  Lord,"  and  the  brethren  of  Thessalonica  are  told  to  value 
them  highly  for  their  works'  sake.^  In  the  Corinthian  Church 
we  hear  of  "  gifts,"  of  "  helps  "  {avTi\^'iyl/€i<i),  anything  that 
could  be  done  for  the  poor  or  outcast  brethren,  either  by  rich 
and  influential  brethren,  or  by  the  devotion  of  those  who  stood 
on  no  such  eminence  ;  and  guidances  or  "  governments  "  {Ku^ep- 
i';/a-e/9),  men  who  by  wise  councils  did  for  the  community 
what  the  steersman  or  pilot  does  for  the  ship.'*  These  "  gifts  " 
were  bestowed  on  members  of  the  community  for  the  service 
of  all ;  and  men  who  were  recognized  to  be  able  to  guide  wisely 
as  well  as  others  from  whom  all  kinds  of  subordinate  service 
could  be  expected,  were  present  within  the  Christian  community 
at  Corinth.^  Again  the  Corinthian  Christians  are  told  "  to  be 
in  subjection  "  to  Stephanas,  the  first  convert,  and  others  like 
him  who  have  ministered  to  the  saints  and  who  have  laboured 
among  them,  putting  heart  into  their  work.^     In  the  Epistle 

^  1  Thess.  V.  14.  ^  2  Cor.  viii.  19.  3  1  Thess.  v.  13. 

4  Hort,  The  Christian  Ecdesia,  p.  159.  5  1  Cor.  xii.  28. 

^  1  Cor.  xvi.  15,  16.  The  phrase  "  to  minister  unto  the  saints " 
(ei's  htaKovlav  Tois  aytots)  corresponds  with  the  StaKovetv  rpaTre^at?  of 
Acts  vi.  2.  This  ministry  to  the  saints,  which  is  connected  with  leader- 
ship of  some  kind,  is  expanded  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  to  include 
liberality,  showing  mercy  and  leadership  (Rom.  xii.  6-8)  ;  and  these 
three  heads  read  like  a  brief  summary  of  the  qualifications  of  the  elder 
or  episcopus  enumerated  in  the  First  Epistle  to  Timothy  (1  Tim.  iii.  1-9). 
In  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Thessalonians  the  thought  of  ministry  to  the 


THE  MINISTRY  61 

to  the  Romans  there  is  express  mention  of  men  who  are  over  their 
brethren,  and  they  arc  told  to  do  their  work  diligently.'  These 
references  and  others  show  us  that  there  were  men  in  these 
Christian  societies  who  were  recognized  as  leaders  and  who 
rendered  continuous  and  valued  services  to  their  brethren 
by  so  dojng.  They  may  not  have  been  office-bearers  by  election 
and  appointment,  but  they  were  engaged  in  doing  the  work 
that  office-bearers  do  in  a  Christian  church. 

Altogether  apart,  however,  from  the  organization  of  the  local 
chiu-ches,  whether  developed  or  undeveloped,  we  find  a  ministry 
which  existed  in  all  the  churches  of  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul, 
and  indeed  in  all  the  churches  of  the  New  Testament.  We 
meet  everywhere  with  men  who  are  called  piro|)hets,_and  who 
occupy  a  distinguished  place  in  the  primitive  churches.  St. 
Paul  esteemed  them  highly.  He  placed  them  second  to  apostles 
in  his  enumeration  of  the  ''  gifts "  bestowed  by  God  on  the 
churches.^  He  exhorts  the  Corinthian  Christians  to  cultivate 
the  "gift"  of  prophecy,  and  the  Thessalonian  Christians  are 
told  to  cherish  "  prophesyings."  It  becomes  evident  the  more 
these  epistles  of  St.  Paul  are  studied,  that  teaching  and  exhorta- 
tion, associated  afterwards  in  a  very  special  manner  with  the 
functions  of  rule  and  leadership,  were  in  the  hands  of  the  prophets 
to  a  very  large  extent  in  the  apostolic  Church,  and  that  no 
iiiquiry  into  the  "  ministry  "  of  the  primitive  Church  can  omit 
th^fmictions^jid^position  of  prophet^  and  prophecy. 

This  brings  us  to  consider  the  "  ministry  "  and  organization 
of  the  churches  in  the  apostolic  age,  a  thing  necessary  to  com- 
plete our  conception  of  what  a  Christian  society  was  like  in 
these  early  times.  The  subject  is  interesting,  but  confessedly 
difficult.  Yet  we  have  light  enough,  from  the  writings  of  the 
New   Testament  and  the   earliest  extra-canonic   literature,  to 

saints  includes  the  three  heads  of  caring  for  the  spiritual  and  bodily  wants 
of  the  brethren,  having  oversight  of  moral  behaviour,  and  leadership  or 
presidency — kottiwi/tcs,  vovOctovvt^^,  and  TrpotcTTaju.ei'ot  (1  Thess,  v.  12). 
^  Rom.  xii.  8.  ^  j  (jor.  xii.  28, 


62     A   CHRISTIAN   CHURCH   IN   APOSTOLIC   TIMES 

show  us  that  it  was  entirely  unUke  anything  which  has  existed 
in  any  part  of  the  Christian  Church  from  the  beginning  of  the 
third   century   downwards. 

Before  we  begin  to  inquire  what  this  ministry  and  organiza- 
tion were,  it  may  be  useful  to  note  two  things  :  first,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  our  Lord  has  clearly  intimated  that  leader- 
ship within  His  Church  was  to  have  a  distinctive  character 
of  its  own  ;  and  secondly,  there  is  from  the  very  first  beginnings 
of  organization  a  clearly  marked  separation  between  two  different 
kinds  of  ministry/ 

'  If  we  examine  the  various  uses  of  the  words  "  minister  "  or  "  servant  " 
or  "  deacon "  (StaKovos),  "  he  who  ministers  or  serves  "  (6  SiaKovwv) 
'-  ministry  or  service  "■  (SiaKovia),  and  "  to  minister  or  to  serve  "- 
{8iaKov€iv)  we  have  the  following  extensive  application : — 

1.  The  ordinary  service  which  a  hired  servant  renders  to  his  master, 

such  as  waiting  at  table,  etc.,  as  in  Luke  xii.  37  and  elsewhere. 

2.  Kindly  personal  attentions  rendered  to  our  Lord,  as  by  St.  Peter's 

mother-in  law  (Matt.  viii.  15  ;  Mk.  i.  31  ;  Luke  iv.  39),  by  Martha 
(Lu.  X.  40  ;  John  xii.  2),  or  by  the  women  from  GaUlee  (Matt,  xxvii. 
55  ;  Mk.  XV.  41  ;  Luke  viii.  3)  ;  or  rendered  to  our  Lord's  followers 
and  looked  on  as  done  to  Himself  (Matt.  xxv.  44  ;  Heb.  vi.  10)  ; 
or  rendered  to  St.  Paul  by  Timothy,  Erastus  and  Oncsimus 
(Acts  xix.  22  ;  Philem.  13  ;   2  Tim.  i.  18). 

3.  The  service  of  angels  rendered  to  our  Lord  and  to  men  (Matt.  iv.  11  ; 

Mark  i.  13  ;    Heb.  i.  14). 

4.  The  service   rendered  by  the  0.  T.  economy  (1  Peter  i.  12  ;    2  Cor. 

iu.  7). 

5.  The  work  of  our  Lord  Himself  (i\Iatt.  xx.  28  ;  Mark  x.  45  ;  Luke  xxii. 

26,  27  ;  2  Cor.  iii.  8  ;  v.  18  ;  Rom.  xv.  8). 

6.  WITHIN    THE    CHRISTIAN    CHURCH   Ave  lind   the  following 

widely  extended  appUcation  : — 

a.  Discipleship  in  general  (John  xii.  26). 

b.  Service  rendered  to  the  Church  because  of  "  gifts  "  bestowed  and 

specially  connected  with  the  bestowal  and  liosesssion  of  these 
"  gifts  "  (Rom.  xii.  7  ;   1  Cor.  xii.  5  ;   1  Peter  iv.  10.  11). 

c.  Hence  all  kinds  of  service,  whether  the  "  ministry  of  the  Word  "■ 

or  ministry  not  distinctly  of  the  Word  (Acts  vi.  2  ;  Matt.  xx.  26  ; 
xxiii.  11  ;    Mark  ix.  35  ;    x.  43). 

d.  SjJecifically  the  "  ministry  of  the  Word  "  (Acts  vi.  4  ;  Eph.  iv.  12  ; 

2  Tim.  iv.  5)  ;  and  most  frequently  the  "  Apostleship  "  (Acts 
i.  17  ;  XX.  24  ;  xxi.  19  ;  Rom.  xi.  13  ;  2  Cor.  iii.  3,  6  ;  iv.  1  ; 
vi.  3  f.  ;    1  Tim.  i.  12  ;    1  Cor.  iii.  5  ;   Eph.  iii.  7  ;   Col.  i.  23,  25). 

e.  Service  which  was  not  a  "  ministry  of  the  Word  "  : — Feeding  the 


RULE,   SERVICE,   AND  GIFTS 

The  distinctive  character  of  leadership  in  the  Christian  Church 
is  given  in  the  saying  of  our  Lord  contained  in  Luke  xxii.  26 
"  He  that  is  greater  among  you  let  him  become  as  the  younger, 
and  he  that  is  chief  as  he  that  doth  serve  "  ;  and  this  junction/ 
of  service  and  leadership  is  maintained  throughout  the  Epistles 
of  St.  Paul.  The  Corinthian  Christians  were  to  place  them- 
selves under  the  guidance  of  Stephanas  and  those  Uke  him  who 
had  served  them  and  laboured  among  them.  Those  that  are 
"  over  the  Thessalonian  brethren  in  the  Lord  "  are  the  men 
who  spend  most  labour  upon  them.  Everywhere  service  and 
leadership  go  together.  These  two  thoughts  are  continually 
associated  with  a  third,  that  of  "  gifts  "  ;  for  the  qualifications 
which  fit  a  man  for  service  and  therefore  for  rule  within  the 
Church  of  Christ  are  always  looked  upon  as  special  "  gifts  "  of 
the  Spirit  of  God,  or  charismata.'^   Thus  we  have  three  thoughts  : 

poor  (Acts  vi.  1)  ;    proAading,  bringing  and  dispensing  resources 
in  the  time  of  famine  (Acts  xi.  29  ;  xii.  25)  ;  organizing,  gathering 
and  conveying  the  great  collection  for  the  poor  saints  at  Jeru- 
salem (Rom.  XV.  25,  31  ;    2  Cor.  viii.  4,  19,  20  ;    ix.  1,  12,  13)  ; 
to  which  we  may  probably  add  the  service  of  the  whole  Church 
of  Thyatira  (Rev.  ii.  19). 
/.  Services  rendered  by  specially  named  men,  and  which  probably 
included  both  the  "  ministry  of  the  Word  "  and  other  kinds  of 
service :— The  ministry  of  Stephanas  (1  Cor.  xvi.  15),  of  Archip- 
pus  (Col.  iv.  17),  of  Tychicus  (Eph.  vi.  21  ;  Col.  iv.  7),  of  Epaphras 
(Col.  i.  7),  and  of  Timothy  (1  Thess.  iii.  2  ;   1  Tim.  iv.  6). 
g.  Men  who  are  ofJice-bearers  in  a  local  church  and  are  called  "  dea- 
cons "  as  a  title  of  office  (1  Tim.  iii.  8-13)  ;    men  who  may  be 
office-bearers  but  who  matj  get  the  name  appUed  to  them   not 
because  of  office  but  because  of  the  work  they  do — a  work  which 
has  not  yet  ripened  into  a  permanent  office  as  in  Phil.  i.  1,  and 
as  in  Rom.  xvi.  1  ("  Phoebe,  our  sister,  who  is  a  deacon  of  the 
Church  which  is  at  Cenchrea,"  and  who  is  also  called  "  patron- 
ess "). 
7.  The  idea  of  "  rule  "  is  conveyed  in  Rom.  xiii.  4,  where  kings  are 
called  the  "  deacons  "  of  God  ;  and  in  John  xii.  26  ;  Matt.  xxv.  44  ; 
Heb.  vi.  10,  where  it  is  said  that  those  who  serve  are  honoured  oi 
the  Father,  and  where  all  service  done  to  the  Church  or  its  mem- 
bers is  said  to  be  done  to  our  Lord  Himself. 

^  The  "  gifts  "  (xa-incr /.iara)  are    individual  capacities  or  excellencies 
laid  hold  on,  strengthened,  vivified  and  appHed  by  the  Spirit  to  service 


y 


64     A   CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC   TIMES 

of  qualification,  which  is  the  "  gift "  of  God ;  the  service  to  the 
Church  of  Christ  which  these  "  gifts  "  enable  those  who  possess 
them  to  perform ;  and  lastly  the  promise  that  such  service  is 
honoured  by  the  Father/  and  is  the  basis  of  leadership  or  rule 
within  the  Church  of  Christ. 

The  earliest  evidence  we  have  for  the  beginnings  of  the  or- 
ganization of  a  local  church  is  given  in  Acts  vi.,  where  we  are 

within  the  community.  They  are  the  natural  capacities  which  men 
possess  apart  from  their  own  jjower  of  acquiring  them  and  which  come 
from  the  free  bounty  of  God  the  Creator.  Men  are  not  all  aHke ;  their 
capacities  and  natural  powers  differ ;  and  thus  when  the  Spirit  works 
through  these  powers  there  is  nothing  mechanical  in  the  activities  set  in 
motion.  These  natural  endowments  are  laid  hold  on  by  the  Spirit, 
strengthened  by  His  agency,  and  used,  each  of  them,  for  a  special  service 
(SiaKovia)  ^vithin  the  Christian  society.  They  may  be  the  natural  capa- 
cities for  teaching,  for  evangelization,  for  the  vision,  and  utterances  of 
spiritual  truths,  for  ecstatic  praise,  for  leadership  of  men,  for  organiza- 
tion, for  duties  to  the  poor  and  sick,  for  the  performance  of  all  the  prac- 
tical and  social  duties  needed  for  the  welfare  of  the  community.  These 
natural  endo'mnents  are  seized  by  the  Sj)irit  and  so  influenced  that  they 
become  the  speciahzed  "  gifts  "  of  the  Spirit,  and  fit  the  possessors  for 

";i^;;__all_kind3^of_serviceyso  that  as  Chrysostom  says,  "  Ivcpyrjixara  koI  xaptcr- 
fi.aTa  Kat  otaKOvtai  ovofjiaTiav  8ia(j)opal /xovaL,  eVei  irpdyfjiaTa  to.  aiura " 
{Cat.  233).     I.isteof  these  "gifts  "  are  given,  none  of  them  being  meant 

*^to  be  exhaustive.^  InXCor.  xii.  4-11  appear  :  the  word  of  wisdom  (Ao'yos 
cro^tas),  the  word  of  knowledge  (Aoyos  -yvwcrews),  faith  (TrtcrTt?)  gifts  of 
healing  {^apLa-fxara  la/xarcoj/),  prophecy  (TrpocfirjTiia),  workings  of  powers 
{ivepyi]fxaTa  Suj'a/xewv),  testing  of  spirits  (Sia/cptcrets  Tn/ev/xarwj'),  kinds 
of  tongues  (yevr/  yAwcrcraJj'),  and  interpretation  of  tongues  {kpii-qveia 
yXw<T(Tuiv).  In  1  Cor.  xii.  28-31  appear :  apostles  (aTroo-roXot),  prophets 
{Trpoc^YjTai),  teachers  (StSacTKa/Vot),  powers  (Sui/a/>i€ts),  gifts  of  healing 
ixapta-fxara  la/AcircoF),  helps  {avTiXy'jij/eL'i),  governments  {Kvfi^pvqcr^i'i), 
kinds  of  tongues  [yivt]  yXwcrcrwj').  In  Rom.  xii.  6-8  appear  : — prophecy 
{7rpo(ji7]TeLa),  service  (StaKovta),  teaching  (8t8ao-Ka\ta),  the  liberal  man 
(6  /xeraStSovs),  the  ruler  (6  7rpoi(rra/A€i'os),  and  the  merciful  man  (6  eXewi/). 
And  in  Eph.  iv.  11  we  have  :  Apostles  (aTrdo-ToXot),  prophets  {irpocfirJTai), 
evangelists  (euayyeAtorat),  pastors  and  teachers  (7rot/x,€V€S  kol  SiSacr/caAot). 
To  these  we  may  add  "  a  man's  capacity  for  the  married  or  cehbate  hfe  '' 
(I  Cor.  vii.  7).  The  conception  of  "gifts"  in  their  relation  to  the 
Christian  society  is  given  in  its  widest  extent  in  1  Peter  iv.  9-11  : 
"  Using  liospitaHty  one  to  another  Avithout  murmuring  ;  each,  as  he 
hath  received  a  'gift,'  ministering  it  to  one  another,  as  good  stewards 
of  the  manifold  bounty  of  God." 
'   John  xii.  20 


TWO   DIFFERENT  KINDS   OF   MINISTRY  65 

told  about  "  seven "  men  being  set  apart  for  what  is  called 
the  "  ministry  of  tables,"  and  which    is  contrasted  with  the 
"  ministry  of  the  Word."  '     We  have  thus  at  the  very  beginnings 
of  organization  a  division  of  ministry,  or  rather  two  different 
kinds  of  ministry,  within  the  Church  of  Christ  in  the  apostolic  age. 
Harnack  calls  this  division  the  "  earliest  datum  in  the  history 
of  organization."  *     The  distinction  which  comes  into  sight  at 
the  very  beginning  runs  all  through  the  apostohc  Church,  and 
goes  far  down  into  the  sub-apostolic  period.     It  can  be  traced 
through  the  Pauline  epistles  and  other  New  Testament  writings, 
and  down  through  such  sub-apostolic  writings  as  the  DidacJie, 
the  Pastor  of  Hermas,  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas,  the  Apology  of 
Justin  Martyr,  and  the  writings  of  Irenaeus.     It  is  also  found 
in  the  Christian  hterature  which  does  not  belong  to  the  main 
stream  of  the   Church's  history,  among  the  Gnostics,  the  Mar- 
cionites  and  the  Montanists.^     The  distinction  ceases  to  be  an 
essential  one  or  one  inherent  in  the  very  idea  of  the  ministry 
when  we  get  down  as  far   as  TertuUian,  but  it  does  not  cease 
entirely.     Prophets  are  found  long  after  Tertullian's  time,  but 
they  no  longer  occupy  the  position  which  once  was  theirs. 

The  common  name  for  those  who  belong  to  the  first  kind  of  • 
ministry  is  "  those  speaking  the  Word  of  God,"  and  this  name 
is  given  to  them  not  only  in  the  New  Testament,  but  also  in  the 
Didache,  by  Hermas,  and  by  Clement  of  Rome.  To  the  second 
class  belonged  the  ministry  of  a  local  church  by  whatever  names 
t£ey  came  to  be  called,  pastors,  elders,  bishops,  deacons.  We 
may  call  the  first  kind  the  prophetic,  and  the  second  kind  the 
local  ministry.  The  great  practical  distinction  between  the 
two  was  that  the  prophetic  ministry  did  not  mean  office-bearers 
in  a  local  church;  while  the  local  ministry  consisted  of  these  office- 
bearers. The  one  was  a  ministry  to  the  whole  Church  of  God, 
and  by  its  activity  bound  all  the  scattered  parts  of  the  Church 

I  Acts  vi.  2.  2  Expositor,  Jan. -June,  1887,  p.  324. 

3  The  evidence  has  been  collected  by  Harnack  in  Texte  u.   Unter- 
siichungen,  II.  ii.  pp.  Ill  f. 

CM.  5 


60     A   CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN  APOSTOLIC   TIMES 

visible  together  ;  the  other  was  a  ministry  within  a  local  church, 
and,  with  the  assembly  of  the  congregation,  manifested  and  pre- 
S3rved  the  miity  and  the  independence  of  the  local  community. 
In  the  apostolic  and  early  sub-apostolic  church  the  prophetic 
ministry  was  manifestly  the  higher  and  the  local  ministry  the 
lower ;  the  latter  had  to  give  place  to  the  former  even  within 
the  congregation  over  which  they  were  office-bearers. 

But  while  this  higher  ministry  can  be  clearly  separated  from 
the  lower  ministry  of  the  local  churches,  it  does  not  follow 
that  these  office-bearers  did  not  from  the  first  count  among 
their  number  men  who  possessed  the  prophetic  gift.  Prophecy 
or  the  gift  of  magnetic  utterance  might  come  to  any  Christian, 
and  St.  Paul  desired  that  it  might  belong  to  all.'  The  two 
ministries  can  be  clearly  distinguished,  but  no  hard  and  fast 
line  can  be  drawn  between  the  men  who  compose  the  ministries. 
The  "  prophetic"  gift  of  magnetic  speech  was  so  highly  esteemed 
that  it  is  only  natural  to  suppose  that  when  congregations 
chose  their  office-bearers  they  selected  men  so  gifted,  if  any 
such  were  within  their  membership.  This,  we  can  see,  was 
the  case  in  later  times.  Polycarj)  was  an  office-bearer  in  the 
Church  at  Smyrna,  but  he  was  also  a  "  prophet."  "  Ignatius 
of  Antioch  was  a  prophet.^  Cyprian  and  other  pastors  in  North 
Africa  had  the  same  gift,  which  was  a  personal  and  not  an  official 
source  of  enlightenment.'^  We  have  by  no  means  obscure  indi- 
cations that  what  took  place  later  happened  in  the  earliest 
period.  The  "  Seven,"  who  were  selected  for  the  lower  ministry 
in  Jerusalem,  did  not  confine  themselves  to  the  "  service  of 
tables,"  but  were  found  among  those  who  "  spoke  the  Word 
of  God  "  with  power. ^ 

''  1  Cor.  xiv.  5. 

2  "  The  glorious  martyr  Polycarp,  who  was  found  an  apostoUc  and 
prophetic  teacher  in  our  o\\ti  time."     Epistle  of  the  Smi/niaeans,  16. 

3  Epistle  to  the  Philadelphians,  7. 

4  Epistles,  Ivii.  5  (liii.)  :   Ixvi,  10  (Ixviii.).  5  Acts  viii,  5,  40j 


The  Prophetic  Ministry  of  the 
Primitive   Church 


67 


CHAPTER   III 


THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 


ST.  PAUL'S  conception  of  a  Christian  community'  is  a  body 
of  which  the  Spirit  of  Christ  is  the  soul.  The  individual 
members  are  all  full  of  the  Spirit,  and  their  individual  powers 
and  capacities  are  laid  hold  of,  vivified,  and  strengthened  by 
the  indwelling  Spirit  in  such  a  way  that  each  is  "  gifted  "  and 
enabled  to  do  some  special  service  for  Christ  and  for  His  Churcli 
in  the  society  in  which  he  is  placed^  Every  true  Christian  is 
"gifted"  inTthis  way.  In  this  respect  all  are  equal  and  of  the 
same  spiritual  rank.  The  equality,  however,  is  neither  mono- 
tonous nor  mechanical.  Men  have  different  natural  endow- 
ments, and  these  lead  to  a  diversity  of  "  gifts,"  all  of  which 
are  serviceable  in  their  places,  and  enable  the  st  tarate  members 
to  perform  different  services,  useful  and  necissary,  for  the 
spiritual  life  of  the  whole  community  and  for  the  growth  in 
sanctification  of  every  member.  Some  have  special  "  gifts " 
bestowed  on  them  which  enable  them  to  do  corresponding 
services,  and  some  are  "  gifted  "  in  a  pre-eminent  degree.  Thus, 
although  every  Christian  is  the  dwelling  place  of  the  Spirit, 
and  is  therefore  to  be  called  "  spiritual "  ^  {-rrvevixariKo^),  some 
are  more  fitted  to  take  leading  parts  than  others,  and  are  called 
the  "  spiritual "  in  a  narrower  and  stricter  sense  of  the  word. 

'  This  is  equally  true  of  the  whole  Qiurch  of  Christ  throughout  the 
whole  world :  for  each  local  church  is  the  Church  in  miniature.  The 
relation  of  the  prophetic  ministry  to  the  whole  Cliurch  on  the  one  hand 
and  to  the  local  church  on  the  other  is  an  instructive  illustration  of  th  e 
visibiUty  of  the  Church  Universal  in  every  Christian  community 

2  1  Cor.  iii;  1 ;  of.  Gal.  vi.  1,  and  1  Cor.  ii.  lij? 

«9 


70  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

These  specialized  gifts  of  the  Spirit  included  all  kinds  of  service, 
and  were  all,  in  their  own  place,  valuable  and  equally  the  "  gifts  " 
of  the  one  Spirit.  Some  of  them,  however,  were  sure  to  be  more 
appreciated  than  others.  To  men  and  women,  quivering  with 
a  new  fresh  spiritual  life,  nothing  could  be  more  thirsted  after 
than  to  hear  again  and  again  renewed  utterances  of  that  "  word 
of  the  Spirit,"  which  had  first  awakened  in  them  the  new  life 
they  were  living.  Hence  among  the  specially  "  gifted  "  persons, 
those  who  had  the  "gift"  to  speak  the  "Word  of  God/^  for 
edification  and  in  exhortation,  took  a  foremost  glace,  and^were 
specially  honoured.^  It  would  be  a  mistake,  however,  to  call 
this  ministry  of  the  "  Word "  the  "  Charismatic  Ministry," 
as  if  it  alone  depended  on  and  came  from  the  "  gifts  "  of  the 
Spirit ;  for  every  kind  of  service  comes  ^  from  a  "  gift,"  and 
the  ministry  of  attending  to  the  poor  and  the  sick,  or  advising 
and  leading  the  community  with  wise  counsels,  are  equally 
charismatic.^ 
St.  Paul  always  assumes  that  this  "  gift "  of  speaking  the 
'J  "  Word  of  God  "  required  a  "  gift  "  in  the  hearers  which  corre- 
iSponded  to  the  "  gift "  in  the  speakers,  and  that  it  would  have 
/small  effect  apart  from  the  general  "gift"  of  discernment  of 
spirits.  The  spiritual  voice  needs  the  spiritual  ear.  The  min- 
istry of  the  Word  depends  for  its  effectiveness  upon  the  ministry 

^  Compare  the  rert/Ar^/^eVot  of  the  Didache  (iv.  1  ;  xv.  2)  and  1  Tim. 
V,  17  :  "  ot  KaXws  Trpoeo-roires  rrpecrfSvTcpoL  SittA^S  ti/xtJs  d^toucr^wcrai', 
fidXKTTa  ol  KOTrtwi'Tes  ev  Aoyw  kol  SiSacrKaXia." 

^  Rom.  xii.  7  :  "  etVc  SiaKoviav,  iv  rfj  Sia/covta,"  and  8ta/coria  is  any 
kind  of  service  in  the  Christian  community. 

3  "  Helps  "  (di'TiXT/i/fets)  and  "  vnse  counsels  "  (Ku/3epj/7;crets)  are 
placed  in  the  same  Ust  of  "  gifts "  with  apostles,  prophets,  teachers 
and  those  who  have  powers  of  heaUng.  The  ministry  of  the  local  church, 
which  is  the  foundation  whence  has  come  the  present  ministry  in  the 
Church  in  all  its  branches,  was  as  much  founded  on  the  "  gifts  "  of  the 
Spirit  as  was  the  ministry  of  the  Word.  Sohm  appears  to  ignore  this  in 
his  otherwise  admirable  discussion  oi  the  "  Lehrgabe  "  {Kirchenrecht,  i. 
28  fT.)  ;  and  Harnack  does  not  have  it  always  before  him,  as  it  ought  to 
be,  in  the  dissertations  appended  to  his  epoch-making  edition  of  theDidache 
(Texte  u.  U liter suchnv gen,  II.  ii.). 


1 


THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY  71 

of  disccrninent :  for  the  "  natural  man  receiveth  not  the  things 
of  the  Spirit  of  God  ;  for  they  arc  foolishness  unto  him  ;  and 
he  cannot  know  them  because  they  are  spiritually  examined." 
There  was  therefore  in  this  ministry  of  the  "  Word  "  the  exer- 
cise of  a  two-fold  "  gift "  or  charisma ;  on  the  one  hand  tl 
charisma  which  enabled  the  speaker  to  declare  wliat  was  the 
message  of  God,  and  on  the  other  hand  the  charisma  in  the  hearers 
which  enabled  them  to  recognize  whether  the  message  was 
really  what  it  professed  to  be,  a  declaration  of  the  Spirit,  to 
receive  it  if  it  was  and  to  reject  it  if  it  was  not.  The  duty 
laid  upon  the  speakers  was  to  speak  forth  the  Word  of  God  in  the 
proportion  of  the  faith  that  was  in  them,  or  to  the  full  measure 
of  the  Christ  that  was  in  them  ;  and  the  duty  laid  upon  the 
hearers  was  to  test  whether  what  was  said  to  them  was  really 
an  utterance  of  the  Spirit." 

This  "  ministry  of  the  Word  "  was  the  creative  agency  in_the 
primitive  Church,  and  it  may  almost  be  said  to  have  had  the 
same  function  throughout  the  centuries  since.  It_was_over- 
thrown  or  thrust  aside  and  placed  under  subjection  to  an  official 
ministry  springing  out  of  the  congregation,  and  it  has  never 
regained  the  recognized  position  it  had  in  the  first  century  and 
a  half.  But  whenever  the  Church  of  Christ  has  to  be  awakened  y 
out  of  a  state  of  lethargy,  this  unofficial  ministry  of  the  Word 
regains  its  old  power  though  official  sanction  be  withheld.    From 

I  1  Cor.  ii.  14. 

-  The  proiihets  who  speak  the  "  Word  of  God  "  are  tokl  to  prophesy- 
according  to  the  measure  of  the  faith  that  is  in  them  :  Kara  ti]v  dvaXoyiav 
T)/?  TTiVrews  (Rom.  xii.  G)  ;  and  the  hearers  are  told  to  test  tlie  speakers 
(1  Cor.  xii.  10,  compare  vv.  1,  4  ;  1  Thess.  v.  21  ;  cf.  1  Cor.  x.  15  ;  xi.  13)  ; 
and  in  1  John  iv.  1-3  it  is  said,  "  Beloved,  believe  not  every  spirit,  but  test 
the  spirits  whether  they  be  of  God,"  etc.  This^  charisma  of  discernment 
lay  at  the  liasis  of  the  "  call ''  given  by  the  congregation  to  men  to  be 
their  office-bcaieis  :  compare  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  ii.  7-9  {Texte  imd 
Untersuchiuujen,  VI.  iv.  pp.  39,  40)  ;  and  its^use  showed  that  the  spiritual 
"gilt"  which  belonged  to.  the  whole  community  was  higher  than  the  i-'^ 
'"  gift"  possessed  by  an  individual  prophet  inasmuch  as  it  was  the  judge 
of  that  gift."-  "  Compare  Sohm,  Kirchcnncht  (1892),  i.  50  IT.,  whose 
remarks,  however  valuable,  seem  too  doctrinaire. 


72  THE  PEOPHETIC  MINISTRY 

one  point  of  view,  and  that  not  the  least  important,  the  history 
of  the  Church  flows  on  from  one  time  of  revival  to  another, 
and  whether  we  take  the  awakenings  in  the  old  Cathohc,  the 
mediaeval,  or  the  modern  Church,  these  have  always  been  the 
wqrk^  of  men  specially  gifted  with  the  power  of  seeing  and  de- 
clarmg  the  secrets  of_tiie_deepest  Christian  life,  and  the  effect 
of  their  work  has  always  been  proportionate  to  the  spiritual 
receptivity  of  the  generation  they  have  spoken  to.  The  Refor- 
mation movement,  which  may  be  simply  described  as  the  trans- 
lation into  articulate  thought  of  the  heart  religion  of  the  mediaeval 
Church,  and  which  revived  in  so  many  ways  the  ideas  and  usages 
of  the  primitive  times,  has  expressed  the  two  cardinal  ideas  of 
this  primitive  ministry  of  the  Word,  in  its  declaration  that  the 
essential  duty  of  the  ministry  of  the  Church  is  the  proclamation  V 
of  the  Gospel,  and  in  its  statement  that  the  principle  of  authority  i ' 
in  the  last  resort  is  always  the  witness  of  the  Spirit  in  the  hearts 
of  believers.^ 

The  divine  "  gift,"  whose  possession  placed  men  among  the 
class  of  those  who  spoke  the  Word  of  God  {Xa\oui>Teg  tov  \6yov 
Tov  Qeovf  gave  the  primitive  Church  its  preaching  ministry.^ 
Those  so  endowed  were  in  no  sense  office-bearers  in  any  one 
Christian  community ;  they  were  not  elected  to  an  office ; 
they  were  not  set  apart  by  any  ecclesiastical  ceremony ;  the 

^  "  Ut  banc  tidem  consequamur,  institutum  est  ministerium  docendi 
Evangdii  et  porrigendi  Sacramenta  "  {Augsburg  Confession,  Pt.  I.  art.  v.). 
"  Nam  sicuti  Deus  solus  de  se  idoneus  est  testis  in  suo  sermone  ;  ita  etiam 
non  ante  tidem  reperiet  sermo  in  hominum  cordibus,  quam  interiore 
Spiritus  testimonio  obsignetur "  (Calvin,  Instit.  I.  vii.  4).  "  Our  full 
persuasion  and  assurance  of  the  infallible  truth  and  divine  authority 
thereof  is  from  the  inward  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  bearing  witness  by  and 
with  the  Word  in  our  hearts  "  ( West.  Conf.  i.  5). 

^  Heb,  xiii.  7  :  Didache  iv.  1  :  "  My  child,  him  that  speaketh  to  thee 
the  Word  of  God  thou  shalt  have  in  remembrance  day  and  night,  and  honour 
him  as  the  Lord :  for,  where  that  which  pertaineth  to  the  Lord  is  spoken, 
there  the  Lord  is." 

3  This  statement  ought  to  be  qualified :  the  local  presidents  or 
Trpotara/xevoi  of  1  Thess.  v.  12  seem  to  have  had  other  duties  besides 
merely  to  exercise  oversight ;    they  had  .also  to  warn  and  instruct. 


APOSTLES,   PROPHETS,   TEACHERS  73 

Word  of  God  came  to  them,  and  they  spoke  the  message  that 
had  been  sent  them.  They  all  had  the  divine  call  manifested 
in  the  "  gift "  they  possessed  and  could  use.  They  were  sent 
for  the  extension  and  edification  of  the  whole  Church  of  God, 
and  although  they  used  their  gifts  in  the  meetings  of  the  local 
communities  yet  they  were  always  to  be  conceived  as  the  min- 
isters of  the  Church  universal.  Some  of  them  were  wanderers 
by  the  very  nature  of  the  work  they  were  called  to ;  many 
of  them,  perhaps  most,  did  not  confine  themselves  to  one  com- 
munity. They  came  and  went  as  they  pleased.  They  were 
not  responsible  to  any  society  of  Christians.  The  local  church 
could  only  test  them  when  they  appeared,  and  could  receive 
or  reject  their  ministrations.  The  picture  of  these  wandering 
preachers,  men  burdened  by  no  cares  of  office,  with  no  pastoral 
duties,  coming  suddenly  into  a  Christian  community,  doing  their 
work  there  and  as  suddenly  departing,  is  a  very  vivid  one  in 
sub-apostohc  literatm-e.  Their  presence — men  who  were  the 
servants  of  all  the  churches  and  of  no  one  church — was  a  great 
bond  which  linked  together  all  the  scattered  independent  local 
churches  and  made  them  one  corporate  whole. 

We  find  in  this  "  prophetic  ministry  "  a  threefold  division. 
They  are  apostles,  prophets  and  teachers.  It  does  not  seem 
possible  to  make  a  veF3t.^trict  or  mechanical  division  between 
the  kinds  of  "  Word  of  God  "  spoketi  hy^  each  class  of  men,  but 
it  may  be  said  that  what  was  needed  for  ^zealous  missionary 
endeavour  was  the  idistinguishing  characteristic  of  the  first 
class,  exhortation  anil  admonition  of  the  second,  art^  instruction 
of  the  third.  In  virtue  of  their  personal  "  gifts  "  they- were  the 
venerated  but  not  official  leaders'  {>)you/iievoi)  of  every  com- 
munity where  they  were  for  the  time  being  to  be  found,  and 
were  worthy,  not  only  of  honour,  but  of  honorarium.'     We  can 

'  Heb.  xiii.  7  :  "  Mvyjfxovevere  twv  rjyovfxh'wv  v/xmu^  oitu'c?  iXaXTja-af 
vfxiv  Tov  Xoyov  tov  ®(.ov.^^ 

2  1  Cor.  ix.  13,  14 ;  Gal.  vi.  6  ;  cf.  2  Cor.  xi.  8,  9,  and  Phil.  iv.  10  fif. 
"  But  every  true  prophet  who  will  settle  among  you  is  worthy  of  his  sup- 
port.    Likewise  a  true  teacher,  he  also  is  worthy,  Uke  the  workman,  of 


X 


74  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

( trace  this  threefold  ministry  of  the  Word  from  the  most  primitive 
I  times  down  till  the  end  of  the  second  century,  if  not  later.  It 
existed  in  the  oldest  Gentile  Cliristian  community,  that  of 
Antioch,  where  a  number  of  prophets  and  teachers  sent  forth 
two  apostles  from  among  their  own  number/  Apostles,  prophets 
and  teachers  are  mentioned  in  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians and  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians.^  The  same  three- 
fold ministry  is  given  in  the  Pastor  of  Hermas,  which  dates 
about  ^140  A.D.,  and  in  the  Pseudo-Clementine  Homilies,  which 
can  scarcely  be  earlier  than  200  a j)."*  In  all  these  authorities 
we  have  the  three  classes  mentioned  together,  and  in  all  save  one 
we  have  them  in  the  same  order.  The  three  classes  are  also 
placed  in  pairs  :  apostles  and  prophets  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians  and  in  the  Apocalypse ;  ^  prophets  and  teachers  in 
the  Didache  and  in  the  Pseudo -Clementine  Letters  ;  ^  apostles 
and  teachers  in  Hermas  and  in  the  Epistles  to  Timothy.'' 
1.  Apostles.     The  distinguishing  characteristic  of  an  apostle*^ 

his  support.  Every  first-fruit  then,  of  the  products  of  the  wine-press 
and  threshing-floor,  of  oxen  and  of  sheep,  thou  shalt  take  and  give  to  the 
prophets."-  Didache.  xiii,  1-3.  Ttyu,?;  has  the  two  meanings  of  "  honour  " 
and  "  honorarium,"  and  it  is  diflicult  to  know  sometimes  how  to  translate 
it ;   a  case  in  point  is  1  Tim.  v.  17. 

I  Acts  xiii.  1-3.  ^  i  Cor.  xii.  28  ;   Eph.  iv.  11. 

3  Hermas,  Simil.  ix.  15  :  "  The  thirtj'-five  are  the  prophets  of  God  and 
His  ministers  ;  and  the  forty  are  the  apostles  and  teachers  of  the  preaching 
of  the  Son  of  God." 

4  Homilies,  xi.  35  :  "  Wherefore,  above  all,  remember  to  shun  apostle 
or  prophet  or  teacher  who  does  not  first  accurately  compare  his  preaching 
with  that  of  James,  who  was  called  the  brother  of  my  Lord." 

5  Rev.  xviii.  20  :  "  Rejoice  over  her,  thou  heaven,  and  ye  saints  and 
ye  apostles  and  ye  prophets.'"  Eph.  ii.  20  :  "  Being  built  on  the  foundation 
of  the  apostles  and  the  prophets."     Didache,  xi. 

^  Didache,  xiii.  1,  2  ;  xvi.  2.  Pseudo-Clementines,  De  Virginitate,i.  11, 
"  Ne  multi  inter  vos  sint  doctores,  fratres,  neque  omnes  sitis  prophdae  "  ; 
but  this  is  a  quotation,  said  to  be  from  Scripture.  For  fuller  fist  of  authori- 
ties compare  Harnack,  Textc  u.  Untersuchungen,  II.  ii.  93-110,  and  tabular 
summary  in  note  pp.  110-112. 

7  Hermas,  Pastor,  Vis.  iii.  5  :    1  Tim.  ii.  7  ;   2  Tim.  i.  11. 

^  For  the  meaning  and  work  of  an  apostle  :  compare  Lightfoot,  St. 
PauTs  Epistle  la  the  Galatians,  7th  ed.  pp.  92-101  ;  note  on  The  name  and 


APOSTLES  75 

was  that  ho  liad  given  himself,  and  that  for  life,'  to  be  a  mission- 
ary, preaching  the  gospel  of  the  Kingdom  of  Christ  to  those 
who  did  not  know  it.  He  had  received  the  "  gift "  of  speaking 
the  "  Word  of  God,"  and  he  was  distinguished  from  others 
who  had  the  same  "  gift  "  in  this,  that  he  had  been  called  either 
inwardly  or  outwardly  to  make  this  special  use  of  it.  The 
prophetand  the  teacher  had  the  same  "  gift "  in  the  same  or 
in  less  measure  than  the  apostle,  but  they  found  their  sphere 
of  its  use  within  the  Christian  community,  while  the  apostle's 
sphere  was  for  the  most  part  outside,  among  those  who  were 
not  yet  within  the  Church  of  Christ.  They  built  on  the  founda- 
tion laid  by  the  apostle  ;  he  laid  the  foundation  for  others  to 
build  upon.^  The  apostles  were  men  who  in  virtue  of  the  im- 
planted ^'  gift "  of  "  speaking  the  Word  of  God  "  and  of  the 
"  call "  impelling  them,  were  sentjorth-to  be  the  heralds  of  the 
kingdom  of  Christ.  This  was  their  life-work.  They  were  not 
appointed  to  an  office,  in  the  ecclesiastical  sense  of  the  word, 
but  to  a  work  in  the  prosecution  of  which  they  had  to  do  all 
that  is  the  inevitable  accompaniment  of  missionary  activity 
in  all  ages  of  the  Church's  history. 

Our  Lord  has  Himself  shown  us  where  to  look  for  the  origin 
and  meaning  of  the  term  "  apostle."  He  declared  Himself 
to  be  the  Apostle  or  Sent  One  of  the  Father  ;  as  the  Father 
had  sent  Him,  so  He  sent  others  in  His  name  to  be  His  apostles 
or  sent  ones,  to  deliver  His  message  of  salvation.^     The  apostles 

ufpce  of  cm  apostle;  Harnack,  Texte  u.  Untersuchungen,  II.  ii.  111-118; 
Weizsacker,  The  Apostolic  Age  (Eng.  Transl.),  ii.  291-299  ;  Sohrn,  Kirchen- 
recM,  i.  42-45  ;  Loening,  Die  Gemeindeverfassung  des  Urchristeuthums, 
pp.  33-37  ;  Armitage  Robinson,  E)}cyc.  Bibl.,  art.  Apostle,  pp.  264-6  ; 
Schmiedel,  Eticyc.  Biblic,  &vi.  Ministry,  pp.  3114-3117;  Hort,  The 
Christian  Ecdesia,  pp.  22-41  ;  Seufert,  Ursprung  und  Bedcutung  des  Aposto- 
lats  ;   C4watkin,  art.  Apostle,  HaMings'  Bible  Dictionary,  i.  126. 

I  1  Cor.  XV.  10  ;   Gal.  ii.  7,  8.  ^  Rom.  xv.  20. 

3  This  appears  to  be  the  line  of  thought  in  our  Lord's  address  in  the 
synagogue  at  Nazareth.  He  quoted  from  Isaiah  Ixi.  1,  about  the  one  sent 
from  God,  and  declared  that  He  was  the  "  Sent  One  "  (Luke  iv.  18,  21)  ; 
He  had  come  to  deliver  a  message  from  the  Father  which  was  to  be  pro- 
claimed in  the  cities  of  Palestine  (Luke  iv.  41  ;    of.  Matt.  xv.  24).     He 


76  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

were  the  representatives  and  "  envoys  "  of  Christ,  the  pioneers 
of  Christianity.  The  word,  therefore,  lends  itself  to  a  very 
wide  application,  for  in  a  sense  every  Christian  ought  to  be  an 
"  envoy  "  or  herald  of  the  Master.  Our  Lord  sanctioned  the 
widest  use  of  the  word  when  He  declared  that  whoever  received 
a  little  child  in  His  name  received  Himself ;  '  the  little  ones 
can  be  and  are  His  "  envoys." 

But  there  were  concentric  rings  in  this  wide  circle  of  appli- 
cation ;  and  the  men  belonging  to  each  were  distinguished  from 
the  others  by  the  kind  of  preparation  they  had  received,  and  by 
the  nature  of  the  call  which  had  come  to  them. 

Our  Lord,  personally  and  by  living  human  voice,  selected 
twelve  men  and  called  them  "  apostles,"  ^  that  byj^CTSonalcom- 

made  His  followers  His  representatives  in  Matt.  x.  40-42  (cf.  the  parallel 
passages  in  Mark  ix.  37,  and  Luke  ix.  48).  The  two  thoughts  are  com- 
bined in  John  xx.  21  :  "  Jesus  therefore  said  unto  them  again,  Peace 
be  unto  you  ;  as  the  Father  hath  sent  Me,  even  so  I  send  you  "  ;  cf. 
Clement,  Ep.  I.  xlii.  1,2;    TertuUian,  De  Praescriptione,  37. 

In  earUer  classical  Greek  "  apostolos  "  meant  a  messenger  who  is  also  a 
representative  of  the  man  who  sent  him  ;  in  later  Greek,  the  Attic  use 
of  the  word  to  mean  "  a  naval  expedition,  a  fleet  dispatched  on  foreign 
service,"  seems  to  have  superseded  every  other.  The  word  however  was 
used  in  later  Judaism  to  mean  the  messengers  sent  from  Jerusalem  to 
collect  the  Temple  tribute  from  the  Jews  of  the  Dispersion  and  who  were 
at  the  same  time  charged  with  the  business  of  carrying  letters  and  advice 
from  the  Jewish  leaders  in  tlie  capital  of  Judaism,  and  of  promoting  re- 
igious  fellowship  throughout  all  the  Jews  scattered  over  the  civilized 
world.  Hence  Dr.  Lightfoot  says,  "  In  designating  His  immediate  and 
most  favoured  disciples  '  Apostles '  our  Lord  was  not  introducing  a  new 
term,  but  adopting  one  which  from  its  current  usage  would  suggest  to 
His  hearers  the  idea  of  a  highly  responsible  mission."  Commentary  on  the 
Epistle  to  the  Galatians  (7th  ed.)  ;  The  name  and  office  of  an  Apostle,  pp. 
93,  94  ;  cf.  also  Seufert,  Ursprung  und  Bedcutung  de-s  Apostolats,  pp.  8-14. 
But  is  is  very  doubtful  if  the  word  was  in  use  in  Judaism  until  after  the 
time  of  our  Lord,  and  it  seems  in  every  way  simpler  to  beheve  that  the 
Christian  origin  and  use  of  the  word  were  what  are  given  above. 

^  Matt,  xviii.  5. 

2  In  Mark  iii.  13-16  we  are  told  that  Jesus  appointed  Twelve,  "  whom 
He  also  called  Apostles  "  (that  is  the  reading  adopted  by  Westcott  and 
Hort)  for  a  double  purpose  (the  two  parts  of  the  purpose  being  made 
emphatic  by  the  repetition  of  ua),  of  being  in  close  companionship  with 
Him,  and  of  sending  them  forth  to  preach  and  to  cast  out  demons.     This, 


APOSTLES  'i'i 

panionship  with  Him  in  the  inner  circle  of  His  disciples,  and  by 
experience  gainea~in"a  limited  mission  of  apprenticeship  among 
the  villages  of  Galilee,  where  following  their  Master's  example 
closely  they  preached  and  cast  out  demons,  they  might  have 
the  training  to  be  witnesses  for  Him  in  the  universal  mission 
which  was  to  be  theirs  after  His  death.  Their  preparation 
was  their  intimate  personal  companionship  with  their  Lord 
and  their  apprentice  work  under  His  eyes.  Their  call  was 
the  living  voice  of  the  Master  while  He  was  with  them  in  the 
flesh.  These  two  things  separated  the  "  Eleven "  from  all 
others  ;  they  were  both  of  them  incommunicable  and  rested 
on  a  unique  experience. 

One,  Matthias,  who  had  enjoyed  the  personal  companion- 
ship with  Jesus,  though  in  a  lesser  degree,  and  who  had  been 
an  eyewitness  during  the  Lord's  ministry  on  earth  and  could 
testify  to  the  Resurrection,  was  called  by  the  voice  of  his  fellow- 
believers  and  by  the  decision  of  the  lot  to  the  same  "  service 
and  sending  forth "  {SiuKovla  koi  ccttoittoX//).'  His  prepa- 
ration was  the  same  as  that  of  the  "  Eleven,"  though  less 
complete  ;  but  his  call  was  quite  different. 

Another,  Eaul,  was  "  called  "  and  prepared  by  Jesus  Him- 
self, but  in  visions  and  inward  inspirations.  We  have  no  evi- 
dence that  St.  Paul  ever  saw  Jesus  in  the  flesh,  still  less  that  he 
had  any  opportunity  of  converse  with  Him.  His  "  call "  came 
to  him  on  the  road  to  Damascus  in  the  vision  of  the  Risen  Christ 
Whom  he  had  been  persecuting ;  it  was  repeated  from  the  hps 
of  Ananias,  also  instructed  in  vision  ;  ^  it  came  to  him  over 
and  over  again  in  his  lonely  musings,  where  he  was  obliged  to 
think  out  for  himself  the  principles  which  were  to  guide  him  in 

that  they  had  to  do,  was  what  Jesus  Himself  had  been  doing  (Mark  i.  39  ; 
cf.  Mark  i.  14-34).  Thus  their  training  was  both  intimate  companion- 
ship and  close  imitation  in  service.  The  acount  is  confirmed  by  Luke 
vi.  13,  where  He  called  the  Twelve  ;  by  Luke  ix.  2,  where  He  sent  them 
forth  to  do  and  to  teach  ;  and  by  Luke  ix.  10,  where  we  are  told  that  they 
did  what  they  had  been  commanded.  Hort,  The  Christian  Ecclesia,  pp. 
22-41.  I  Acts  i.  25.  ^  Acts  ix.  10  ff. 


78  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

his  new  life.  His  preparation  was  altogether  different  both 
from  that  of  the  "  Eleven  "  and  of  Matthias.  They  had  been 
gradually  prepared ;  they  had  been  led  step  by  step,  and  had 
been  weaned  from  their  old  life  in  half-conscious  ways.  He  had 
been  torn  out  of  his  by  a  sudden  wrench  ;  and  his  preparation 
had  been  given  him  in  inward  moral  struggle  and  spiritual 
experience,  in  musings  and  visions  and  raptures,  "  whether 
in  the  body  or  out  of  the  body  "  he  could  not  tell.^  It  was  this 
difference  in  "  call "  and  preparation — the  difference  between 
personal  intercourse  with  Jesus  in  the  flesh  and  intercourse 
with  Him  in  visions — that  separated  St.  Paul  from  the  "Eleven." 
And  it  was  this  difference  that  St.  Paul's  opponents  of  the 
"  sect  of  the  Pharisees  who  believed  "  seized  upon  when  they 
refused  to  acknowledge  his  claims  to  apostolic  authority.  If 
we  take  the  Pseudo-Clementine  literature  to  represent  the 
opinions  of  these  men  and  their  successors,  and  discern  in  the 
attacks  made  on  Simon  Magus  an  example  of  their  arguments 
against  the  apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  there  is  abundant  proof 
of  this.  The  whole  argument  in  the  last  chapter  of  the  17th 
Homily  turns  on  the  impossibility  of  trusting  to  information 
received  in  visions,  or  of  verifying  and  authenticating  them. 
The  argument  comes  to  a  climax  in  the  question  :  "  Can  any 
one  be  rendered  fit  for  instruction  through  visions  ?  And  if 
you  say,  '  It  is  possible,'  then  I  ask.  Why  did  our  teacher  abide 
and  discourse  a  whole  year  to  those  who  were  awake  ?  And 
how  are  we  to  believe  your  word,  when  you  tell  us  that  He 
appeared  to  you  ?  "  ^ 

In  others  who  were  called  "  apostles  "  the  Spirit  had  implanted 
the  inward  "  call  "  to  consecrate  themselves  to  a  life  of  mission- 
ary endeavour,  and  had  given  them  that  gift  of  speaking  the 
Word  of  God  which  made  the  "  call  "  fruitful.  Yet  another  class 
had  been  selected  by  Christian  communities  and  sent  forth 
to  be  their  apostles,  the  "  apostles  of  the  churches,"  who  were 

\2  Cor.  xii.  1-4 ;    Gal.  i.  15-17. 

2  Clementine  Homilies,  xvii.  13-20 ;    the  quotation  is  from  sect.  19. 


APOSTLES  79 

also  the  apostles  of  the  Master,  and  who  were  called  by  St.  Paul 
"  the  glory  of  Christ."  ' 

Men  belonging  to  all  these  classes,  and  to  others  besides, 
are  called  "  apostles  "  in  the  writings  of  the  New  Testament, 
where  the  name  is  by  no  means  confined  to  the  "  Eleven," 
Matthias,  and  St.  Paul.  Barnabas  -  was  an  "  apostle."  He 
had  been  selected  at  the  bidding  of  the  Spirit  by  the  circle  of 
prophets  and  teachers  at  Antioch,  and  had  been  sent,  with 
prayer  and  laying  on  of  hands,  to  be  the  companion  missionary 
of  St.  Paul ;  he  is  called  an  apostle  to  the  Gentiles  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  and  St.  Paul  associates  him  with  him- 
self when  he  claims  the  privileges  everywhere  accorded  to  ac- 
knowledged apostles.  Andronicus  and  Junias  were  "  apostles," 
who  had  been  in  Christ  before  St.  Paul.^  Silas  or  Silvanus  and 
Timothy  are,  on  the  most  natural  interpretation,  classed  as 
apostles  in  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Thessalonians.    St.  Paul  and 


*  2  Cor.  viii.  23  :  "  Our  brethren,  the  apostles  of  the  churches,  the  glory 
of  Christ."' 

2  Acts  xiii.  2,  3 :  "  The  Holy  Ghost  said,  Separate  me  Barnabas  and 
Saul  for  the  work  whereunto  I  have  called  them.  Then  when  they  had 
fasted  and  prayed  and  laid  their  hands  on  them,  tliey  sent  them  away  "  ; 
xiv.  4  :  "  But  the  multitude  of  the  city  was  divided  ;  and  part  held  with 
the  Jews  and  part  with  the  apostles  (Barnabas  and  Paul)  "  ;  xiv.  14  : 
"  But  when  the  apostles,  Barnabas  and  Saul  heard  it  .  .  ."  ;  Gal.  ii.  9  : 
"  They  who  were  reputed  to  be  pillars  gave  to  me  and  to  Barnabas  the 
right  hands  of  fellowship  that  we  should  go  unto  the  Gentiles  and  they 
to  the  circumcision."     Compare  1  Cor.  ix.  5,  6. 

3  Rom.  xvi.  7  :  "  Salute  Andronicus  and  Junias,  my  kinsmen  and  my 
fellow  prisoners,  who  are  of  note  among  the  apostles,  who  also  have  been 
in  Christ  before  me."  The  phrase  "  of  note  among  the  apostles  "  has 
often  been  translated  "  highly  esteemed  among  the  apostles."  Upon  this 
Dr.  Lightfoot  remarks  :  "  Except  to  escape  the  difficulty  involved  in  such 
an  extension  of  the  apostolate,  I  do  not  think  the  words  oltiv€<;  cicriv 
ima-rjfjiot  iv  tois  aTTocTToAot?  would  have  been  generally  rendered  "  who 
are  highly  esteemed  by  the  apostles "  ;  and  he  goes  on  to  say  that 
the  Greek  fathers  took  the  more  natural  interpretation  and  included 
Andronicus  and  Junias  among  the  apostles.  He  quotes  Origen  and 
Chrysostom.  The  latter  thought  that  Junias  or  Junia  was  a  woman's 
name,  and  yet  he  numbered  her  among  the  apostles.  Lightfoot,  Commen- 
tary on  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  (7th  ed.),  p.  96  n. 


80  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

his  companions  in  his  missionary  work  among  the  Thessalonians 
had  received  no  material  support  for  their  labours,  "  though  we 
might  have  been  burdensome  to  you,  being  apostles  of  Christ  "  ; 
and  the  we  most  probably  includes  Silas  and  Timothy,  whose 
names  appear  with  that  of  St.  Paul  in  the  superscription  of  the 
letter."  In  1  Cor.  iv.  9,  when  St.  Paul  says :  "  I  think  that 
God  hath  set  forth  us  the  apostles  last  of  all  as  men  doomed 
to  death ;  for  we  are  a  spectacle  unto  the  world,  both  to  angels 
and  to  men,"  Apollos,  on  the  most  natural  interpretation  of 
the  passage,  is  classed  with  St.  Paul  among  the  apostles  who 
are  thus  set  forth.'     Epaphroditus  is  mentioned  as  one  of  the 

'  1  Thess.  i.  1,  6.  Dr.  Lightfoot  includes  Silas  among  those  who  are 
called  apostles  by  St.  Paul,  but  refuses  to  include  Timothy:  (1)  because 
Timothy  had  not  seen  the  Lord,  and  (2)  because  when  the  apostle 
mentions  Timothy  elsewhere  he  carefully  excludes  him  from  the  apostolate. 
He  writes  in  Col.  i.  1  and  in  2  Cor.  i.  1,  "  Paul  an  apostle  and  Timothy  the 
brother  ";  and  in  Phil.  i.  1  :  "  Paul  and  Timothy  servants  of  Jesus  Christ."- 
In  the  Pastoral  Epistles  Timothy  is  described  as  an  evangelist :  "  Do  the 
work  of  an  evangelist ;  fulfil  thy  ministry  "  (2  Tim.  iv,  5).  It  is  held  by 
many,  among  others  by  Lightfoot  and  Sohm,  that  the  evangelists  of  2  Tim. 
iv.  5,  of  Eph.  iv.  11,  and  of  Acts  xxi.  8  (Philip  the  evangelist),  were  men 
who  did  the  work  of  wandering  missionaries  but  lacked  the  indispensable 
characteristic  (as  they  think)  of  an  apostle,  viz.  having  seen  the  Lord 
and  received  a  commission  from  Him  (Luke  xxi  v.  48  ;  Acts  i.  22 ;  1  Cor, 
ix.  1).  This  distinction  may  prove  good  for  the  apostolic  period,  though 
it  seems  doubtful  that  it  does,  but  it  entirely  falls  to  the  ground  in  the 
immediately  succeeding  times.  I  am  incUned  to  conclude  that  there  is 
really  no  distinction  between  a  wider  use  of  the  term  apostle  and  the  evan- 
gelist.  The  word  "  evangelist  "  occurs  very  seldom.  The  three  references 
exhaust  the  New  Testament  uses  ;  it  disappears  entirely  in  the  immedi- 
ately post-apostoHc  literature,  it  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  Apostolic  fathers 
nor  in  the  Didache.  When  it  reappears,  as  in  TertulUan,  De  Praescrip- 
tione  4  (Qui  pseudapostoli  nisi  adulteri  evangeHzatores)  and  in  Eusebius 
{Hist.  Eccl.  III.  xxxvii.  2,  4)  it  is  used  to  describe  such  men  as  were 
called  "  apostles  "  in  the  Didache.  On  the  other  hand  the  apostles  are 
described  as  "  entrusted  with  the  evangel "  (Gal.  i.  7,  8)  ;  as  those  who 
"  preach  the  evangel"  (1  Clement,  42) ;  as  the  twelve  evangeUzers  (5a?-- 
nabas,  viii.  3).  Light.,  Com.  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Oalatians  (7th  ed.),  p. 
96  n.,  97.  Sohm,  Kirchenrecht,  i.  42  n.  ;  Harnack,  Texte  und  Unters.  II. 
ii.  113  n.,  114  ;   Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons  (Eng.  Trans.),  p.  16,  n.  8). 

2  Lightfoot  excludes  Apollos  on  the  double  ground  that  it  is  extremely 
unlikely  that  he  had  seen  the  Lord,  and  because  Clement  of  Rome,  speaking 


APOSTLES  81 

"  apostles  of  the  churches,"  (the  church  of  PhiUppi),  and  is  called 
by  St.  Paul  "  my  brother,  and  fellow- worker  and  fellow-soldier."  ' 
Many  scholars  include  James  the  brother  of  our  Lord  among 
those  called  apostles  by  St.  Paul ;  but  the  evidence  is  very 
doubtful,  and  James  had  not  the  missionary  work  which  be- 
longs to  an  apostle.^  Besides  these  St.  Paul  speaks  of  men 
whom  he  calls  ironically  "  pre-eminent  apostles,"  ^  and  more 
gravely  "  false  apostles,"  who  had  come  among  the  Corinthian 
believers  to  seduce  them  from  their  allegiance  to  the  apostle, 
probably  from  Jerusalem,  furnished  with  letters  of  commenda- 
tion *  from  St.  Paul's  enemies  there,  and  who  had  insinuated 
that  St.  Paul  was  no  true  apostle.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  St.  Paul  denied  that  these  men  were  apostles  so  far  as 
outward  marks  went.  They  were  missionaries  and  had  given 
themselves  to  the  work  ;  they  had  come  furnished  with  cre- 
dentials.    Li  all  outward  respects  they  were  apostles  lilce  many 

of  Petsr,  Paul  and  ApoUos,  calls  the  two  former  drrooroAot  fx^fxapTvprjiJie- 
voi  and  the  latter  avrjp  SeSoKLfjiacrixevo';  (1  Clem.  48). 
"■  Phil.  ii.  25. 

2  The  evidence  for  including  James,  the  brother  of  our  Lord  among 
those  called  apostles  by  St.  I'aul  is  contained  in  1  Cor.  xv.  7  :  ''  Then  He 
appeared  to  James  ;  then  to  all  the  apostles  ;  and,  last  of  all,  as  unto  one 
born  out  of  due  time,  He  appeared  to  me  also  "  ;  in  1  Cor.  ix.  5  :  "  Even 
as  the  rest  of  the  apostles,  and  the  brethren  of  our  Lord,  and  Cephas  "  ; 
and  Gal.  i.  19,  which  may  read :  "  But  other  of  the  apostles  saw  I  none, 
save  James  the  Lord's  brother,"  and  would  then  include  James  among 
the  apostles,  or :  "  But  1  saw  no  other  apostle,  but  only  James  the 
Lord's  brother."  which  would  exclude  James.  James  is  included  b}'  Light- 
foot,  Sohm,  Weizsiicker  {Apostolic  Aye  (Eng.  Trans.),  ii.  204)  and  many 
others. 

3  The  phrase,  tcov  virepXtav  (XTrocrTo/Vwi',  is  translated  in  the  R.  V. 
"  the  chiefest  apostles,"  which  would  imply  that  the  "  Twelve  "  were 
meant.  But  this  is  impossible.  St.  Paul  would  never  have  called  the 
"  Twelve  "  "  false  apostles,  deceitful  workers,  fashioning  themselves  into 
apostles  of  Christ "  (2  Cor.  xi.  13),  as  he  does  the  men  mentioned  in  xi.  5 
and  xii.  11.  The  marginal  reading,  "  those  pre-eminent  apostles,"  is  in 
every  way  to  be  prefeiTed.  Cf.  Heimici's  masterly  exposition.  Das  Zucite 
Semlschreihen  des  Apostcl  Paulus  an  die  Korinthier,  pp.  401—412  ;  also 
Schmiedel,  Encyc.  Bibl.  art.  Ministry,  p.  3114. 

^   2  Cor.  iii.  i. 

CM.  6 


82  THE  PEOPHETIC  MINISTRY 

others ;  but  their  message  was  false  ;  they  preached  another 
Christ ;  they  were  among  the  false  prophets  whom  the  Master 
had  said  would  come.' 

As  the  earlier  decades  passed  the  numbers  of  men  who  were 
called  apostles  increased  rather  than  diminished.  They  were 
wandering  missionaries  whose  special  duties  were  to  the  heathen 
and  to  the  unconverted.  In  writings  like  the  Didache  they  are 
brought  vividly  before  us.  They  were  highly  honoured,^  but 
had  to  be  severely  tested.  They  were  not  expected  to  remain 
long  within  a  Christian  community  nor  to  fare  softly  when 
they  were  there.  They  were  the  special  envoys  of  One  Whose 
kingdom  is  not  of  this  world,  and  Who  had  sent  forth  His 
earUest  apostles  with  the  words  :  "  Go,  provide  neither  gold 
nor  silver  nor  brass  in  your  girdle  nor  wallet  for  your  journey, 
neither  two  coats,  neither  shoes  nor  staff."  ^  Primitive  Chris- 
tians insisted  on  as  rigorous  an  imitation  as  did  St.  Francis, 
and  accordingly  formulated  the  saying  into  the  rule  that  if  the 
apostle  spent  more  than  three  days  among  his  fellow  Christians, 
if  he  asked  for  money,  if  he  were  not  content  with  bread  and 
water,  he  was  no  true  apostle,  and  was  not  to  be  received.'^ 

All  these  men,  called  apostles,  have  one  distinguishing  char- 
acteristic :  they  have  given  themselves  for  life  to  be  missionary 
preachers  of  the  Gospel  of  the  Kingdom  of  Christ.  Hence  it 
seems  superfluous  to  accumulate  from  the  epistles  of  St.  Paul 
a  great  variety  of  marks  of  the  apostolic  character  and  work.' 

^  Matt.  xxiv.  11  ;    Mark  xiii.  22. 

2  Didache,  xi.  4  :  "  Every  apostle  who  cometh  to  you  let  him  be  re- 
ceived as  the  Lord." 

3  Matt.  X.  10  ;    of.  Luke  ix.  3  ;    Mark  vi.  8. 

4  Didache,  xi.  5,  6  :  "  He  shall  not  remain  except  for  one  day  ;  if  how- 
ever, there  be  need,  then  the  next  day  ;  but  if  he  remain  three  days,  lie 
is  a  false  prophet.  But  when  the  apostle  departeth,  let  him  take  nothing 
except  bread  enough  till  he  lodge  again  ;  but  if  he  ask  for  money,  he  is  a 
false  prophet.  "- 

5  Dr.  Lightfoot  has  made  a  Ust  of  what  he  conceives  St.  Paul  thought 
were  the  indispensable  quaUfications  for  the  apostoUc  office: — the  apostle 
must  have  been  a  witness  of  the  Resurrection  (Acts  i.  21-23)  ;  and  this  was 


APOSTLES  83 

The  one  distinctive  feature  about  all  of  them  was  not  so  much  what 
they  were,  but  what  they  did.  They  were  all  engaged  in  a  life 
work  of  a  peculiar  kind,  aggressive  pioneering  missionary  labour. 
The  crowning  vindication  of  their  career  was  what  they  put  into 
it  and  what  they  were  able  to  accomplish  ;  their  courage,' 
their  self-sacrificing  endurance,"  the  "  signs,  wonders  and  mighty 
deeds  "  which  accompanied  their  labours,^  and,  above  all,  the 
results  of  their  work.  It  was  to  this  last  that  St.  Paul  appealed 
over  and  over  again.  His  Corinthian  converts  were  the  seal 
of  his  apostleship  ;  he  did  not  need  ^vritten  certificates  from 
coterie  or  council,  from  Jerusalem  or  Antioch,  for  the  Corin- 
thians were  his  living  "  letter  "  of  commendation  known  and 
read  of  all  men."*  He  appealed  to  what  every  great  missionary 
would  point  to  if  he  were  asked  to  justify  his  work,  to  what 
our  Lord  Himself  appealed  to  when  He  was  put  to  the  question.^ 

supplied  to  St.  Paul  by  a  miraculous  revelation  ;  a  commission  received 
either  directly  from  our  Lord  or  through  the  medium  of  the  Church  as 
was  the  case  with  Matthias  (Acts  i.  23-26),  and  with  St.  Paul  himself ,  who 
was  not  actually  invested  with  the  rank  of  apostle  till  he  received  it  along 
with  Barnabas  at  Antioch  (Acts  xiii.  2)  ;  the  conversions  which  resulted 
from  his  work  (1  Cor.  ix.  2)  ;  possessing  the  signs  of  an  apostle,  which  were 
I^artly  moral  and  spiritual  gifts  such  as  patience,  self-denial,  effective 
preaching,  and  partly  supernatural  "  signs,  wonders  and  mighty  deeds." 
Coin,  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  (7th  ed),  pp.  98,  99. 

Weizsacker  has  also  made  a  collection  of  the  qualitications  of  an  apostle, 
but  he,  rightly  enough,  considers  that  they  were  the  quahtications  demanded 
from  St.  Paul  by  his  enemies,  and  are  therefore  what  they  declared  a  true 
apostle  ought  to  possess.  "  According  to  them  the  candidate  for  the 
apostolate  required  above  all  to  be  a  Jew  by  birth  (2  Cor.  xi.  22).  He 
must  have  seen  Jesus  (1  Cor.  ix.  1  ;  cf.  2  Cor,  v.  16)  and  been  an  acknov.- 
ledged  promoter  of  His  cause  (2  Cor.  xi.  23  ;  cf.  Acts  i.  21).  Personal 
qualities,  like  courage  (2  Cor.  x.  Iff.)  and  eloquence  seem  also  to  have  been 
required.  On  the  other  hand  the  apostle  was  then  expected  to  attest 
himself  by  certain  signs  (2  Cor.  xii.  12),  above  all  by  miraculous  powers 
and  achievements  ;  again  by  visions  and  revelations  (2  Cor.  xii.  1),  and 
further,  by  attacks  which  could  not  fail  to  be  made  upon  him,  and  by  his 
bearing  under  them  (2  Cor.  xi.  13  ff.)."  He  adds,  "  All  this  would  have 
been  meaningless,  if  only  a  given  number  of  definite  individuals  had  been 
recognized  as  apostles."     The  Aiwstolic  Age,  ii.  295  (Eng.  Trans.). 

I  2  Cor.  iii.  12  ;   x.  1  11.  ;   xi.  21.  ^  2  Cor.  vii.  5  ;   xii.  10. 

3  2  Cor.  xii.  12.         ^  1  Cor.  ix.  2  ;   2  Cor.  iii.  1-3.         5  ]Matt.  xi.  2-5. 


84  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

There  could  not  but  be  gradations  in  this  wide  company  of 
apostles,  and  these  depended  on  things  personal  and  incommuni- 
cable. Nothing  could  take  from  the  "  Eleven  "  the  fact  that 
they  had  been  personally  selected  and  trained  for  their  mission- 
ary work  by  Jesus  while  He  was  still  with  them  in  the  flesh. 
This  gave  them  a  unique  position  not  only  within  the  Jewish 
Christian  Church,  but  also  throughout  all  Christendom.  This 
also  was  the  basis  of  the  apostolate  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the 
term.  Others  might  be,  and  were,  "  separated  unto  the  Gospel 
of  God,"  might  devote  themselves,  in  obedience  to  the  "  call " 
that  came,  to  a  life  of  active  missionary  work,  and  have  their 
"  call  "  vindicated  in  the  abundant  fruit  of  their  labours.  The 
Risen  Christ  had  appeared  to  many  others  besides  themselves. 
What  separated  the  "  Eleven  "  from  other  apostles  was  that  the 
Lord,  while  in  the  flesh,  had  selected  them  and  had  spent  long 
months  in  training  them  for  their  work.  They  were  mission- 
aries like  the  others,  and  made  missionary  tours  like  them,  but 
this  special  and  unique  preparation  which  no  others  possessed 
gave  them  a  position  apart.  St.  Paul  claimed  that  he  too  be- 
longed to  this  inner  circle  ;  his  claims  were  admitted  when 
Peter,  James  and  John  "  saw  that  he  had  been  entrusted  with 
the  Gospel  of  the  uncircumcision,  even  as  Peter  with  the  Gospel 
of  the  circumcision,"  in  that  memorable  interview,  when  the 
older  apostles  gave  Barnabas  and  Paul  the  right  hands  of  fellow- 
ship. St.  Paul  proved  to  them  that  his  call  and  preparation 
had  been  as  intimate  as  theirs.  Christ,  Who  "  had  wrought 
for  Peter  unto  the  apostleship  of  the  circumcision,"  had 
"  wrought  for  Paul  unto  the  Gentiles,"  '  and  they  had  seen  that 
it  was  so.  And  as  his  preparation  had  been  the  same,  so  the 
"  call  "  had  come  to  him  directly,  as  distinctively,  and  as  immedi- 
ately from  God  as  it  had  come  to  the  Twelve,^  and  his  vision 
of  the  Risen  Saviom*  had  been  as  evident.^ 

^  Gal.  ii.  7-9. 

*  1  Cor.  i.  1  :  "  Paul  called  to  be  an  apostle  of  Jesus  Christ,  by  the  wdll 
of  God."  2  Cor.  i.  1.  Gal.  i.  1  :  "  Paul,  an  apostle  not  from  men  nor 
through  man,  but  through  Jesus  Oiriat,  and  God  the  Father." 

3  1  Cor.  ix.  1  ;   xv,  8. 


APOSTLES  85 

These  two  uses  of  the  term  apostle,  the  wider  and  the  narrower, 
continued  beyond  the  apostoUc  age.  We  can  see  this  in  the 
Didache,  which  carries  the  reference  to  the  narrower  circle 
in  its  title,'  while  in  its  description  of  the  wandering  "  apostles  " 
it  paints  the  itinerant  missionaries  to  whom  the  term  belonged 
in  its  widest  extent.  We  can  also  see  it  in  the  difficulties  which 
the  early  fathers  had  to  determine  what  was  the  number  of  the 
apostles,  and  who  were  to  be  included  within  it.^ 

The  unique  position  occupied  by  the  "  Eleven  "  and  by  St. 
Paul  was  personal  to  themselves  ;  it  was  based  on  a  unique 
and  immediate  experience  ;  no  succession  could  come  from  it.j 
But  apostles,  in  the  wider  sense  of  the  term,  have  always  existed 
in  the  Church  of  Christ,  and  are  with  us  still  in  the  missioners 
and  missionaries  of  the  various  branches  of  the  Christian  Church. 
In  lands  where  the  language  of  the  New  Testament  is  still  spoken, 
the  name  as  well  as  the  thing  survives ;  the  missionaries  and 
missioners  of  the  modern  04 reek  Church  are  still  called  "  holy 
apostles."  ^ 

It  was  the  apostolate  in  its  widest  extent  that  was  a  part 
of  the  "  prophetic  ministry  "  of  the  primitive  Church.  When 
we  think  of  apostles  as  part  of  the  triad  of  "  apostles,  prophets 
and  teachers,"  we  must  have  in  mind,  not  twelve  or  thirteen, 
but  large  numbers  who  were  missionaries  in  the  Church,  and  took 
the  first  rank  in  the  prophetic  ministry  because  their  duty  was 
to  extend  the  boundaries  of  the  Church  of  Christ.  They  all 
belonged  to  the  class  of  those  "  gifted  "  to  "  speak  the  Word  of 
God,"  men  who  were  to  be  tested  by  the  discriminating  "  gift," 

^  The  full  title  is  AiSa;^T/  tCjv  SwSeKa  'Attoo-toXwi',  "  The  Teaching  of 
the  Twelve  Apostles." 

-  Compare  Lightfoot,  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  99,  100. 

3  Missionaries  and  missioners  in  the  Greek  Church  are  called  UpuTroo-ro- 
Xoi.  "  The  delegates  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury's  mission  to  the 
Nestorians  are  regularly  called  apostles  by  the  Syrians  of  Urmi  '•'  (Armitage 
Robinson,  Encyc.  Bihl.,  art.  Apostle,  p.  2G5).  So  are  the  priests  who 
itinerate  in  the  Peloponnesus  preaching  to  great  open  air  gatherings  on  the 
market-days  at  such  towTis  as  TripoHtza. 


/ 


86  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

but  who,  when  received,  were  to  be  lionoured  and  their  word 
obeyed.  The  spiritual  "  gift "  which  they  possessed  was  a  per- 
sonal and  not  an  official  thing ;  and  in  one  sense  they  were 
all  on  the  same  level,  for  they  had  all  the  same  "  gift."  But 
they  differed  in  natural  endowments,  and  the  spiritual  gift  had 
been  bestowed  in  larger  measure  on  some  than  on  others.  Some 
could,  and  did,  fill  a  large  sphere  and  wield  an  enormous  in- 
fluence ;  others  had  to  content  themselves  with  a  much  inferior 
position ;  but  whether  their  sphere  was  large  or  small  they  had 
the  same  work  to  do.  They  were  the  pioneers  of  primitive 
Christianity.  They  cannot  be  compared  with  the  officials 
of  a  long  established  church.  The  only  safe  comparison  is  with 
the  missionary  of  modern  times,  and  their  work  has  the  curious 
double  action  which  must  characterize  pioneer  Christian  work 
in  all  places  and  at  all  times. 

They  had  to  teach  Christian  morality  to  converts  ignorant 
of  its  first  principles,  and  this  could  only  be  done  when  stern 
command  mingled  with  sweet  persuasiveness.  They  had  to  deal 
v/ith  people  who  could  but  awkwardly  apply  the  moral  prin- 
ciples they  had  been  taught,  and  had  to  select  typical  cases, 
and  to  point  out  how  they  must  be  decided.  On  the  one  side 
their  action  must  appear  to  be  highly  autocratic  ;  on  the  other 
their  influence  was  entirely  personal,  and  their  only  means  of 
enforcing  their  decisions  was  by  persuasion. 

They  had  to  show  their  converts  not  merely  how  to  live  lives 
worthy  of  their  new  profession  ;  they  required  to  train  them 
in  the  art  of  living  together  in  Christian  society,  and  they  had 
to  do  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  foster  social  as  well  as  individual 
responsibility.  So  on  the  one  hand  they  can  be  represented 
as  shaping  constitutions,  selecting  and  appointing  office-bearers, 
and  generally  controlling  in  autocratic  fashion  the  communities 
their  teaching  had  gathered  together ;  and  on  the  other  hand 
this  very  work  can  be  truly  described  as  the  almost  independent 
effort  of  the  communities  themselves.'     For  it  is  the  missionary's 

^  Many  of  the  differences,  which  make  the  Pastoral  Epistles  so  different 


APOSTLES  87 

business,  and  often  the  hardest  part  of  it,  to  create  the  feelings 
of  corporate  responsibihty  and  independent  action.  His  work 
is  that  of  a  parent  training  his  children,  and  dependent  on 
natural  relationship  and  personal  character  for  the  obedience 
he  demanded,  not  that  of  an  ecclesiastical  superior  with  official 
rights  to  support  his  injunctions. 

If  this  double  characteristic  inherent  in  all  missionary  work 
be  forgotten,  it  is  possible  to  take  the  most  opposite  views  of 
apostolic  methods  and  of  the  rights  which  an  apostle  claimed 
to  have  and  to  exercise.'  Men,  like  Sohm,  who  dwells  upon  the 
power  to  command  inherent  in  the  possession  of  the  "  gift  " 
of  speaking  the  Word  of  God,  search  for,  find  and  point  to  St. 
Paul's  interference  in  the  details  of  the  life  of  his  communities. 

from  the  earlier  epistles  of  St.  Paul,  disappear  when  the  missionary 
character  of  the  apostle's  work  is  kept  steadily  in  view. 

^  Sohm  {Kirchenrecht,  i.  pp.  42-5)  declares  that  with  tlie  "  gift "  of 
"  speaking  the  Word  of  God "  there  went  as  its  accompaniment  the 
"  gift "  of  spiritual  rule,  and  that  all  "  apostles,  prophets  and  teachers  " 
who  had  the  one  were  also  entrusted  with  the  other.  He  shows  how  the 
apostles  in  the  primitive  church  of  Jerusalem  led  in  all  things  :  in  the 
ministry  of  the  "  Word,"  in  prayer,  in  the  appointment  of  office-bearers 
(the  community  elected  but  the  apostles  appointed  —  KUTao-Tyaofxev, 
Acts  vi.  3 — and  presided  in  the  laying  on  of  hands)  ;  and  when  they  were 
absent  at  their  missionary  work  James  took  tlieir  place.  St.  Paul  decided 
for  his  communities  questions  of  arrangement,  sometimes  by  quoting  a 
"  word  of  the  Lord,"  sometimes  by  giving  his  own  opinion  (1  Cor.  xiv. 
37) ;  decided  upon  questions  of  marriage  (1  Cor.  vii.  10,  P2),  of  virgin 
daughters  (1  Cor.  vii.  25,  40),  and  generally  declared  "  how  ye  ought  to 
walk  "  (1  Thess.  iv.  1).  Timothy  and  Titus,  not  because  they  were  the 
apostle's  delegates,  but  because  they  had  the  "  gift "  of  the  "  Word," 
appointed  to  office  (Titus  i.  5  ;  1  Tim.  iii.  1  ff.  8  IT.),  and  directed  eccle- 
siastical discipline  (1  Tim.  v.  19,  20  ;    Titus  iii.  10). 

Loening  {Die  Gemeindeverjnssung  des  Urchristenthums,  pp.  34,  35).  on 
tlie  other  hand,  thinks  that  the  duties  of  an  apostle  were  purely  ethical : 
to  teach  believers  how  they  should  behave  as  Christians,  and  in  particular 
what  changes  they  had  to  make  in  their  conduct  (1  Cor.  iv.  16,  17)  ;  when 
the  apostle  has  a  "  word  of  the  Lord  "  then  he  commands,  but  otherwise 
the  apostle  is  not  master  of  the  faith  of  his  converts  (2  Cor.  i.  24),  and  his 
directions  are  only  counsels  founded  on  his  own  experience  ;  and  it  is 
\vith  entreaties  and  persuasion  that  he  asks  the  exclusion  of  a  grievous 
sinner  and  the  reception  again  of  a  repentant  one  (1  Cor.  v.  3  ff.  ;  2  Cor. 
ii.  5  ff.-;    vii;  11  ff,). 


88  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

While  others,  Hke  Loening,  who  see  the  plain  evidences  of  the 
independence  and  self-government  in  these  same  communities, 
insist  that  the  apostle's  whole  relation  to  his  converts  was  purely 
ethical,  and  had  nothing  to  do  with  organization  and  its  working. 
Six  months  spent  in  watching  a  missionary  at  work  would  have 
taught  them  how  to  combine  their  views. 

No  apostle  stands  forth  so  clearly  before  later  generations 
as  does  St.  Paul.  His  letters  reveal  the  man,  his  modes  of  work, 
the  authority  he  possessed  and  the  way  in  which  he  used  it. 
We  may  take  him  as  the  highest  type  of  the  first  order  of  the 
prophetic  ministry.  His  duties  and  the  authority  which  lay 
behind  them  were  what  belonged  to  the  'planting  of  Christianity. 

His  claims  to  authority  rested  upon  a  double  basis.  He  had 
J  received  words,  sayings  and  commandments  of  Jesus  which  he 
could  hand  on  to  his  converts  and  which  were  the  "  traditions  " 
which  he  asked  them  to  hold  fast ;  ^  and  being  filled  with  "  the 
Spirit  of  God,"  i.e.,  one  of  those  who  were  "  gifted,"  to  "  speak 
the  Word  of  God,"  he  could  give  the  authoritative  interpretation 
of  these  commands,  and  could  show  the  true  application  of  the 
principles  of  Christian  morality.^  He  might  have  demanded 
to  be  honoured  for  these  possessions  and  "  gifts,"  ^  but  he  pre- 
ferred to  rest  his  claims  to  the  obedience,  reverence,  and  affec- 
tion of  his  converts  on  the  personal  relation  which  had  grown 
up  between  them  and  himself.'^ 

He  was  the  first  who  had  made  the  Gospel  known  to  them, 
and  their  faith  in  the  Lord  was  of  itself  witness  to  his  power 
over  them  and  to  his  claims  upon  them  ;  and  this  intimate 
personal  relation  between  teacher  and  pupil,  between  preacher 

^  1  Cor.  xi.  2 :  "  Hold  fast  the  traditions,  even  as  I  delivered  them  to 
you." 

2  The  direct  command  of  Jesus  St.  Paul  calls  iiriTayrj,  while  his  own 
suggestions  receive  the  name  of  crvyyi'uifjir]  or  yvwixr/  ;  cf.  1  Cor.  vii.  6, 
10,  25;  these  suggestions  have  a  measured  authority  for  the  giver  has 
the  Spirit  of  God  :    1  Cor.  vii.  40  ;  xiv.  37. 

3  1  Thess.  ii.  6  :  "  When  we  might  have  claimed  honour  from  you,  as 
apostles  of  Christ."-  4  1  Cor.  ix.  2  ;    2  Cor.  iii.  1-3, 


APOSTLES  89 

and  convert,  between  guide  and  follower  on  the  pathway  heaven- 
ward, ought  to  beget  on  their  part  gratitude,  affection,  trust  and 
imitation/  He  was  their  spiritual  father,  and  he  could  claim 
the  affectionate  obedience  due  to  a  parent,  while  as  a  father 
he  had  the  right  both  to  praise  and  to  blame,  and  that  with 
severity.^ 

St.  Paul  never  forgot  that  he  was  doing  the  work  of  a  pioneer, 
and  that  his  work  was  but  half  done  if  his  communities  of  con- 
verts remained  in  a  state  of  pupilage.  He  was  therefore  careful 
to  cultivate  their  sense  of  personal  and  corporate  responsibility. 
While  he  was  ready  to  answer  any  questions  about  difficulties  ^ 
which  had  arisen  in  the  communities,  he  was  very  careful  to 
make  suggestions  only,  and  to  leave  the  full  responsibility  for 
the  decisions  to  come  on  the  shoulders  of  the  society.  Even 
in  the  case  of  the  gross  sin  of  incest  "  the  condemnation  he  pro- 
nounces is  not  from  a  distance  or  in  his  own  name  only  ;  he 
twice  represents  himself  as  present,  present  in  spirit,  in  an  as- 
sembly where  the  Corinthians  and  his  spirit  are  gathered  together 
^vith  the  power  of  our  Lord  Jesus.  That  is,  while  he  is  peremptory 
that  the  incestuous  person  shall  be  excluded  from  the  com- 
munity, he  is  equally  determined  that  the  act  shall  be  their 
own  act,  and  not  a  mere  compliance  with  a  command  of  his."  "* 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  all  the  numerous  apostles 
of  the  primitive  Church  were  men  like  St.  Paul ;  his  natural 

^  Gal.  iv.  13  ff.  ;    1  Cor.  iv.  16  ;   xi.  1  ;   Phil.  iii.  17. 

2  Gal.  iv.  19  ;   1  Cor.  iv.  14  ;   18-21  ;  2  Cor.  ii.  9  ;  xiii.  2,  3. 

3  1  Cor.  vii.-x. 

4  Hort,  The  Christian  Ecdesia,  p.  130  ;  cf.  pp.  84-5.  For  the  case 
mentioned  above,  cf.  1  Cor.  v.  1-13,  with  the  conclusion  :  "  Do  ye  not 
judge  them  that  are  within,  whereas  them  that  are  without  God  judgeth  ? 
Put  away  the  wicked  man  from  among  yourselves."  For  the  authority 
exercised  by  the  apostles,  besides  Hort  as  above,  compare  Weizsacker, 
The  Apostolic  Age,  ii.  297-299;  (Eng,  Trans.)  ;  Schmiedel,  Encyc.  Bibl., 
art.  Ministry,  pp.  3116,  3117.  Gore,  The  Church  and  the  Ministry  (3rd 
ed.),  pp.  233-238,  an  account  in  which  history  suffers  from  being  looked 
at  through  the  coloured  glass  of  apostolic  succession.  Gwatkin,  art. 
Apostle  in  Hastings^  Bible  Dictionary,  i.  126, 


90  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

endowments  and  the  large  "  gift "  of  the  Spirit  he  possessed 
give  him  a  place  by  himself.  Yet,  the  due  deductions  made,  we 
can  see  in  him  the  type  of  these  unknown  men  who  were  the 
pioneers  of  Christianity  in  the  first  century ;  men  who  carried 
the  Gospel  to  Antioch,  who  sowed  its  seeds  in  imperial  Rome, 
who  made  hundreds  of  little  barren  spots  the  gardens  of  the 
Lord.  They  went  first ;  the  prophets  and  the  teachers  followed 
in  their  steps. 

2.  JWhile  the  apostle  was  the  missionary  of  the  primitive 
Church,  the  prophet '  found  his  work  within  the  Christian 
communities  which  had  been  created  by  the  energy  of  the 
apostles.  Prophecy  was  the  universal  and  inseparable  ac- 
companiment of  primitive  Christianity  and  one  of  its  most 
distinctive  features.  Wherever  the  Spirit  of  Jesus  had  laid  hold 
on  men,  and  believers  were  gathered  into  societies,  there  appeared 
among  them  some  who  believed  themselves  to  be  specially  filled 
with  the  Spirit  of  the  Master,  and  able  to  speak  His  Word,  as 

'  He  wished  it  to  be  spoken.  When  such  an  one  addressed  them, 
his  fellow  Christians  seemed  to  hear  the  Lord  Himself  speaking  : 
"  for,"  they  said,  "  where  that  which  pertaineth  to  the  Lord 

\is  spoken,  there  the  Lord  is."  ^ 

Prophecy  had  its  home  in  Palestine  ;  the  ancient  prophets, 
with  the  "  Word  of  Jehovah  "  on  their  lips,  were  the  spiritual 
guides  in  Israel  of  old.  It  had  been  silent  for  generations, 
but  its  reappearance  was  expected  and  longed  for  by  pious  Israel- 
ites as  a  sign  of  the  nearness  of  the  Messianic  time.     They  looked 

^  For  the  Prophetic  Ministry  compare :  Mosheira,  Dissertationes  ad 
historiam  ecclesiasticam  pertinentes  (1743),  ii.  pp.  132-308  :  De  prupketis 
ecdesiae  apostolicae  dissertatio  ;  Harnack,  Encyclopedia  Britan.  art.  Prophet^ 
(New  Testament)  :  Texte  iind  Untersnchiingen,  II.  ii.  119  ff.  ;  Heinrici, 
Das  erste  Sendschreiben  des  Apostel  Paulus  an  die  Korinthier,  pp.  347-462  ; 
Loening,  Die  Oemeindeverfassung  des  Urchristenihums,  pp.  33  ff.  ;  Robin- 
son, Encyc.  Biblica,  3883  It.  ;  Gayford,  Hastings'  Bible  Dictionary  ; 
art.  Church,  i.  434  IT.  ;  Selwyn,  Christian  Prophets  (1899)  ;  Weinel,  Die 
Wirknngen  des  Geistes  und  der  Geister  im  nachapostolischen  Zeitalter  bis 
Irenaeus  (1899) — an  extravagant  book. 

'  Didache,   iv.    1. 


PROPHETS  91 

for  the  return  of  Elijah  or  Jeremiah  or  another  of  the  prophets  ;  ' 
and  the  apostles  could  appeal  to  the  prophecies  of  Joel  to  ex- 
plain the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  and  its  universal  diffusion 
on  the  day  of  Pentecost.^  Our  Lord  too  had  led  His  followers 
to  expect  a  revival  of  prophecy.  He  had  said  that  He  would 
send  prophets  ;  had  foretold  that  unbelievers  would  maltreat 
them  when  they  appeared ;  ^  and  had  promised  a  prophet's 
reward  to  those  who  received  His  prophets. 

We   need   not   wonder   then   that   Christian   prophets   arose 
in  the  Jewish  Christian  Church,  and  were  to  be  found  there 
from  the  very  beginning  ;  but  what  is  to  be  remarked  is  that  _ 
prophecy  was  not  confined  to  the  Jewish  Church.     It  appeared 
spontaneously  wherever  the  Christian  faith   spread.      We  find 
prophets  in  the  churches  of  Jerusalem  and  Caesarea  among 
purely  Christian  Jewish  communities  ;  ^  at  Antioch  where  Jews 
and  Gentiles  mingled  in  Christian  fellowship  ;  ^  and  everywhere 
throughout   the    Gentile    churches— in   Rome,    in   Corinth,    in 
Thessalonica,    and    in    the    Galatian    Church.^    Prophets    are 
mentioned  by  name  in  the  New  Testament  writings— Agabus,^ 
Barnabas,   Saul,   Symeon  Niger,   Lucius   of  Cyrene,   Manaen,^ 
Judas  and  Silas.^     Women  prophesied,  among  them  the  four 
daughters  of  Philip. '°    Prophecy,  with  prophets  and   prophet- 
esses, appears  in    almost    uninterrupted   succession    from    the 
very  earliest  times  down  to  the  close  of  the  second  century, 
and  indeed  much  longer,  although  it  did  not  retain  its  old  posi- 
tion. From  the  beginning  too  we  find  the  true  prophet  confronted 
by  the  false,  who  preached  a  strange  Christ,  and  attempted 
to  turn  believers  away  from  the  faith. 

The  primitive  Church  had  its  birth  at  a  time  when  the  old 

'  Matt.  xvi.  U  ,   Mark  vi.  15  ;   viii.  28  ;   Luke  ix.  8. 

2  Acts  ii.  16  ;    cf.  Joel  ii.  28,  29. 

3  Matt.  X.  41  ;    Matt,  xxiii.  34  ;    Luke  xi.  49. 

4  Acts  xi.  27  ;    xv.  32  ;    xxi.  9,  10.  5  Acta  xi.  27  ;    xiii.  1. 

6  Rom  xii.  6,  7  ;   1  Cor.  xiv.  32,  36,  37  ff.  :   1  Thess.  v.  20  ;  Gal.  iii.  3-5. 

7  Acts  xi.  28  ;   xxi.  10.  ^  Acts  xiii.  1.  ^  Acts  xv.  32. 
1°  Acts  xxi.  9, 


92  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

religions,  whether  Jewish  or  Pagan,  had  lost  their  power  ;  when 
the  old  religious  formulae  no  longer  appealed  to  the  hearts  and 
consciences  of  men  ;  when  an  immediate  revelation  of  the  mind 
of  the  Master  was  the  one  pressing  religious  need  for  which  all 
craved.  Prophecy  gave  this  to  the  young  Christian  communi- 
ties. The  effect  of  the  presence  of  these  inspired  men,  who 
spoke  soberly  enough  at  times,  and  often  burst  forth  into  rap- 
tures and  recited  the  visions  they  had  received,  can  scarcely 
be  overrated.  They  confirmed  the  weak,  they  admonished  the 
lax,  they  edified  the  whole  society. 

The  word  "  prophet,"  like  the  term  "  apostle,"  was  used 
in  a  wider  and  in  a  narrower  sense.  In  its  widest  meaning 
it  could  be,  and  it  was,  applied  to  all  the  three  classes  who  were 
"  gifted  "  to  "  speak  the  Word  of  God."  St.  Paul  himself  was 
called  a  prophet  long  after  he  had  begun  his  apostolic  mission.' 
He  had  the  peculiar  prophetic  gift  of  speaking  in  visions  and 
"  revelations."  ^  The  "  teachers "  also  had  something  in 
common  with  the  "  prophets."  ^  In  this  wider  use  the  whole 
Church  was  said  to  be  composed  of  "  saints  and  prophets,"  "^ 
and  the  prophets  when  present,  assumed  the  lead  in  the  local 
churches  {tiyoviJ^evoi).'' 

"  Acts  xiii.    1.     Dr.   Lightfoot  seems  to  think  that  Saul  was  only  a 

prophet  until  he  had  received  the  "  call  "  from  the  prophets  and  teachers 

at  Antioch.     "  The  actual  investiture,  the  completion  of  his  call,  as  may 

be  gathered  from  St.  Luke's  narrative,  took  place  some  years  later  at 

Antioch.     It  was  then  that  he,  together  witli  Baranbas,  was  set  apart 

by  the  Spirit  acting  through  the  Church,  for  the  work  to  which  God  had 

destined  him,  and  for  which  he  had  been  quahfied  by  the  api^earance  on 

the  road  to  Damascus."     Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Oalatians  (7th 

ed.),  p.  98.     But  this  surely  contradicts  St.  Paul's  own  statements.     He 

claimed  to  have  been  an  apostle  from  his  conversion,  in  Acts  xxii,.  21,  and 

in  Acts  xxvi.  17.     Ramsay,  St.  Paul  the  Traveller,  pp.  66,  67,  answers  this 

curious  theory  very  thoroughly.  ^  2  Cor.  xii.  1-5. 

r     3  The   "  prophet "   is  continually  called  a  teacher  and  said  to  teach, 

I  Didache,  xi.  10  ;    and  the  woman  Jezebel,  who  called  herself  a  prophet, 

lis  said  to  have  taught  and  seduced  many  in  the  church  at  Thyatira,  Rev. 

jfi.  20.  4  Rev.  xi.  18  ;    xvl.  6. 

;    5  Silas  and  Judas,  who  were  prophets  in  the  church  at  Jerusalem  are 
called  rjyovfi.i.voi  there :    Acts  xv.  22  ;    cf.  Heb,  xiii.  7  and  above  p.  73. 


PROPHETS  93 

In  the  narrower  sense  of  the  term  prophecy  had  its  distinct 
sphere  between  apostleship  and  teaching.  St.  Paul,  following 
his  Master,  places  it  second  in  his  Hst  of  the  "  gifts  "  which 
God  has  bestowed  on  His  Church.'  It  had  its  place  within 
the  congregation,  and  was  part  of  the  preaching  ministry  of  the 
apostolic  Church.  In  the  picture  St.  Paul  gives  us  of  the  meeting 
for  edification,  prophecy  in  the  order  of  service  ^  comes  between 
the  part  devoted  to  instruction  and  "  speaking  in  a  tongue." 
St.  Paul's  statements  lead  us  to  believe  that  the  prophetic 
"  gift "  was  not  confined  to  a  favoured  few.  He  expected  that 
it  should  manifest  itself  in  every  community  of  Christians.  He 
desired  that  every  member  of  the  Corinthian  Church  should 
possess  it,  and  that  all  should  strive  to  cultivate  it.^  The  Chris- 
tians in  Thessalonica  were  exhorted  to  cherish  "  prophesyings,"  * 
and  the  brethren  in  Rome  to  make  full  use  of  the  "  gift."  ^  If 
he  criticised  the  action  of  prophets  at  Corinth  it  was  for  the 
purpose  of  teaching  them  how  to  make  the  best  of  the  "  gift " 
which  had  been  entrusted  to  them  for  the  edification  of  their 
brethren.^  * 

What  then  was  prophecy  ?  The  new  revelation  of  God  in 
Jesus  Christ,  the  new  way  of  approach  to  the  Infinite  Father 
manifested  in  the  appearance  of  the  Son,  had  created  for  the 
primitive  Christians  a  new  life  and  had  illumined  them  with 
a  new  light.  It  gave  them  a  new  insight  into  the  relations 
between  God  and  man,  and  a  fresh  manifestation  of  the  bonds 
uniting  our  Father  in  Heaven  with  His  children  on  earth.  It 
made  them  see  with  new  vividness  the  way  of  God's  salvation 
and  the  duties  which  God  required  of  man.  There  arose  in  the  if 
midst  of  the  primitive  Christian  societies  men  specially  filled 
with  all  this  wealth  of  insight,  and  inspired  or  "  gifted  "  to  dis- 
close to  their  fellows  the  divine  counsels  and  the  hidden  mys- 
teries of  the  faith.  These  were  the  prophets.  ' 
They  were  teachers.      A.  large  part  of  what  they  uttered  was 

I   1  Cor.  xii.  28.  ^  ggg  above,  p.  46.  3  i  Cor.  xiv.  1,  5,  39. 

4  1  Thess,  V.  20.  5  Rom.  xii.  6.  ^  1  Cor.  xiv.  29-33-. 


94  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

instruction,  but  their  peculiar  "  gift "  was  distinct  from  that  of 
the  teacher.  He  had  to  make  known  the  new  facts  and  events 
which  the  Gospel  had  disclosed  ;  he  had  to  trace  the  connexion 
betv/een  these  divine  events,  and  to  explain  the  rationale  of 
the  divine  forces  at  work  for  man's  salvation.  He  had  to  show 
the  bearings  of  these  divine  facts  and  forces  upon  beliefs  and 

I  ways  of  living.  The  distinctively  prophetic  task  was  different. 
The  prophet  was  a  producer,  not  an  expounder  simply,  not  a 
man  whose  task  was  finished  when  he  had  tausjht  others  to  assi- 
milate  the  divine  knowledge  which  lay  at  their  disposal.  The 
prophet  added  something  more.  He  was  a  revealer  bringing 
forth  something  new.  For  prophecy  presupposed  revelation  ; 
it  rested  upon  it ;  and  apart  from  revelation  it  did  not  exist.  ^ 
The  prophet  was  a  man  of  spiritual  insight  and  magnetic  speech. 
What  he  uttered  came  to  him  as  an  intuition  of  the  Spirit,  as 
if  he  had  heard  a  voice  or  seen  a  sight. 

This  does  not  mean  that  the  prophet  spoke  in  a  state  of  ecstasy 
or  amentia.  St.  Paul's  suggestions  in  1  Cor.  xiv.  29-33  imply 
that  the  prophet  retained  his  consciousness  throughout  and  had 
the  power  to  control  himself.  The  apostle  counselled  that 
whatever  number  of  revelations  had  been  received,  not  more 
than  two  or  three  should  be  uttered  during  one  meeting,  and 
that  if  a  brother  received  a  revelation  while  another  was  speak- 
ing the  speaker  should  give  way.  Prophecy  might  be  ecstatic, 
and  we  have  evidence  that  it  frequently  was,  but  it  was  not  so 
necessarily.  Non-ecstatic  prophecy  lasted  in  the  Church  for 
two  centuries,  and  can  be  shown  to  have  existed  among  the 
Montanists,  notwithstanding  the  accusations  of  their  oppo- 
nents.^ 

Prophecy  might  be  based  on  "  visions."  St.  Paul  appeals 
to  his  own  visions  as  well  as  to  his  "  revelations."  ^  The  Apo- 
calypse, which  is  the  great  prophetic  book  of  the  New  Testa- 

1  1  Cor.  xii.  3  ;    xiv.  6,  26,  30,  32  ;   Matt.  xvi.  17. 

2  Cf.  Ritsclil,  Die  Enstehung  der  altkatholischeti  Kirche,  p.  475. 

3  2  Cor.  xii.  1-5. 


PROPHETS  05 

raent  and  the  most  conspicuous  relic  we  have  of  the  prophecy 
of  the  primitive  Christian  Church,  is  a  series  of  visions  seen  by 
a  prophet  and  related  by  him.'  Sub-apostolic  prophecy  had 
its  "  visions  "  also.  The  Pastor  of  Hermas,  a  Roman  presbyter 
or  elder  who  was  a  prophet,  is  largely  composed  of  "  visions."  * 
But  "  visions  "  were  not  essential  to  prophecy,  nor  do  they 
seem  to  have  been  its  common  accompaniment.  All  inspired 
witness-bearing  was  prophecy,  and  we  may  almost  say  that 
free,  spontaneous  discom'se  about  spiritual  things  was  its 
essential  characteristic.  We  learn,  for  example,  from  the 
Didache  that,  while  a  definite  form  of  words  was  prescribed 
for  the  celebration  of  the  Eucharist,  the  prophets  were  not 
bound  to  use  it.  They  were  to  be  allowed  to  "  give  thanks 
as  much  as  they  will.''  ^  At  the  same  time  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  prophets  were  always  beheved  to  speak  in  a  very 
special  fashion  in  the  name  of  God  and  with  His  authority. 
When  the  prophet  spoke  God  was  present,  and  the  prophet 
was  to  be  listened  to  as  the  messenger  of  God,'^ 

There  is  nothing  in  the  whole  series  of  descriptions  of  prophecy 

^  Rev.  xxii.  9. 

-  Compare  the  very  full  account  of  Hernias  in  the  Did.  of  Chr.  Biog.  ii. 
912-927.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  how  many  of  the  "  visions  "  of  the 
sub-apostoUc  prophets  were  concerned  wth  some  question  of  Christian 
life  and  practice.  Hermas  had  a  vision  about  the  restoration  of  repentant 
sirmers  to  Church  pri\'ileges  (Vis.  iii.  7);  Cyprian  had  one  about  the 
subject  which  interested  him  most — the  obedience  which  ought  to  be  given 
to  bishops  ;  and  Eusebius  {Hist.  Ecd.  V.  iii.  2-3)  relates  how  while  the 
confessors  of  Lyons  were  in  prison,  it  was  revealed  to  one  of  them,  Attalus, 
after  his  fii-st  conflict  in  the  arena,  that  his  companion  did  not  act  wisely 
in  prison  in  keeping  to  his  ascetic  living,  that  he  told  his  vision  to  his 
companion  Alcibiades,  who  gave  heed  to  him  and  left  off  his  ascetic  usages, 
for,  it  is  added  "  they  were  not  deprived  of  the  grace  of  God,  but  the 
Holy  Spirit  was  their  director." 

3  Didache,  x.  7. 

4  1  Cor.  xiv.  25  ;  Gal.  iv.  14  ;  Didache,  iv.  1  :  "  My  child,  remember 
rught  and  day  him  that  speaketh  to  thee  the  word  of  God  and  honour 
him  as  the  Lord  ;  for  where  that  which  pertaineth  to  the  Lord  is  spoken, 
there  the  Lord  is."  Acts  xiii.  1,2:  "  Now  there  were  at  Antioch,  in  the 
church  that  was  there,  prophets  .  .  .  and  as  they  ministered  to  the 
Lord  and  fasted,  ffec  £fo^^  (r^si  aaid,  Separate  Me  Barnabas  and  Saul.  .  .  ." 


96  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

which  have  come  down  to  us  from  apostolic  and  from  sub- 
apostolic  times  to  suggest  that  the  prophets  held  any  office, 
or  that  they  were  the  recognized  heads  of  local  churches.   Office- 
bearers,   indeed,    might   be   prophets ;  for   the    "  gift "    might 
[come  to  anyone,  and  St.  Paul  desired  that  it   should    be   the 
)ossession  oT  every  member  of  the  Corinthian  Church.     Office 
leither  brought  it  nor  excluded  it ;  a  prophet  was  a  gift  of  God 
\to  the  whole  Church,  and  no  community  could  make  exclusive 
claim  to  him. 

Nevertheless  prophets  had  an  important  influence  within 
the  local  churches  of  primitive  times.  We  can  see  this  from  the 
Epistles  of  St.  Paul  and,  from  sub-apostolic  literature,  we  can 
discern  that  their  influence  grew  rather  than  diminished  during 
the  first  decades  of  the  second  century.  This  power  seems  to 
ha vjLJbfien^  exercised  more  particularly  in  the  two  matters  of 
'^iscipline_^nd  absolution  or  restoration  to  membership  after 
gross  cases  of  sin.  St.  Paul  does  not  lend  his  sanction  to  any 
such  special  powers  of  interference.  When  he  speaks  of  ex- 
communication or  of  restoration  he  addresses  himself  to  the 
whole  Christian  community,  in  whose  hands  he  takes  for  granted 
that  these  duties  rest.^  But  in  writing  to  the  Galatian  church 
about  dealing  with  sinners  he  uses  the  words,  "  Ye  that  are 
spiritual "  {-TrueufxaTiKot).^  This  term  "  spiritual  man "  or 
7rvevfxaTiK6<f  came  to  be  used,  in  a  fashion  quite  different  from 
St.  Paul's  use,  almost  exclusively  of  the  prophets ;  ^  and  the 
phrase  of  the  apostle  must  have  had  some  effect  in  leading 
primitive  Christians  to  believe  that  the  prophets  were  the  persons 
to  deal  with  these  matters.  The  primitive  Church  early  adopted 
the  idea  that  certain  sins,  of  which  varying  lists  are^giyen^jvere 

I   1  Thess.  V.  14  ;   1  Cor.  v.  1-8  ;  2  Cor.  ii.  5-8. 

^  Gal.  vi.  1  :  {i/Acts  ot  Trv^vjxaTiKoX  Karaprt'^tre  tov  tolovtov. 

3  Pseudo-Clem.,  De  Virginit.  i.  11  :  "  With  the  gift  therefore  tliat  thou 
hast  received  from  the  Lord,  serve  the  spiritual  brethren,  the  prophets." 
Irenaeus,  Adv.  Haer.  V.  vi.  1  :  "In  hke  manner  we  do  hear  of  many  breth- 
ren in  the  Church,  who  possess  the  prophetic  gifts  .  .  .  whom  also  the 
aj)ostle  terms     spiritual.'  " 


PROPHETS  97 

of  such  a  grievous  kind  that  the  sinner  could  not  be  received 
back  again  into  the  Christian  society.  They  did  not  hold  that 
these  sins  were  beyond  the  mercy  of  God  ;  but  they  did  think 
that,  \yithout  the  direct  voice  of  God  commanding  them,  it  was 
not  permitted  to  them  to  restore  such  sinners  to  the  communion 
of  the  Christian  society.  The  voice  of  God  they  believed  that 
they  could  hear  in  the  judgment  of  the  prophet ;  and  the  prophets 
could  declare  the  forgiveness  which  the  community  felt  to  be 
beyond  their  power.  Tertullian,  who  rejiresents  the  older  view, 
expresses  this  very  strongly.'  It  was  also  believed  that  God 
dwelt  in  the  martyrs  as  He  did  in  the  prophets,  and  that  con- 
fessors and  martyrs  had  the  right  to  declare  whether  sinners 
ought  to  be  absolved  and  restored.^  There  are  evidences  also 
that  the  prophets  had  a  large  share  in  declaring  who  were  to  be 
chosen  to  fill  the  posts  of  office-bearers  in  the  local  churches. 
All  these  things  go  to  show,  that  if  the  statement  that  the 
prophets  exercised  a  "  despotism  "  ^  over  the  primitive  Christian 
churches  is  too  strong,  they  did  possess  ^ry  great  authoiaty — 
the  authority  which  belongs  to  one  who  is  believed  to  utter  the 
Word  of  God. 

The  prophets  who  are  referred  to  in  St.  Paul's  epistles  seem 
to  have  been  members  of  the  eommunities  which  they  edified 
with  their  "  gift "  of  exhortation  and  admonition,  and  this  was 
no  doubt  the  case  with  the  largest  number  of  tliese  gifted  men. 

^  Tertullian,  De  Pudicitia,  xxi.  :  "  The  Church  it  is  true  will  forgive 
sins  ;  but  it  will  be  the  Church  of  the  Spirit,  by  means  of  a  spiritual  man  ; 
not  the  Church  which  consists  of  a  number  of  bishops.  For  the  right  and 
judgment  is  the  Lord's,  not  His  servant's  ;  God's  Himself,  not  the 
priest's."     Hermas,  Pastor,  Mandata,  IV.  iii. 

2  Sohm  has  collected  the  evidence  for  the  right  assigned  to  martyrs  to 
pronounce  absolution  on  the  belief  that  God  was  specially  present  in  His 
martyr,  in  his  Kirchenrecht,  i.  32,  n.  9.  The  office-bearers  deprived  the 
prophets  of  the  right  of  absolution  and  took  it  upon  themselves  in  the 
end  of  the  second  and  in  the  beginning  of  the  third  centuries  ;  and  Cyprian's 
long  struggle  wth  the  confessors  in  North  Africa  ended  in  the  overthrow 
of  all  such  rights  in  the  hands  of  any  but  the  regular  office-bearers  in  the 
Church. 

3  Hamack,  Theol.  Lit.  Zeitung,  1889,  pp.  420,  421. 

CM.  7 


98  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

But  many  who  had  the  "  gift "  in  a  pre-eminent  way  took  to 
wandering  from  one  local  church  to  another,  in  order  to  awaken 
Christian  life  and  service  in  newly  planted  congregations  ;  and 
the  wandering  habit  easily  grew  when  the  services  of  the  travel- 
ling prophets  proved  welcome  to  the  infant  communities.  This 
custom  was  foreshadowed  by  our  Lord  Himself  when  He  pro- 
mised a  prophet's  reward  to  those  who  received  His  prophets,' 
and  it  evidently  existed  from  the  earliest  times.  Agabus  wan- 
dered from  church  to  church  ;  we  hear  of  his  being  at  Jerusalem, 
Antioch  and  Caesarea.^  Such  wandering  prophets  might 
easily  become  apostles,  and  we  can  see  an  example  of  this  change 
of  work  when  Barnabas,  who  did  a  prophet's  work  in  Antioch,  was, 
at  the  call  of  the  Spirit,  sent,  along  with  Saul,  to  undertake  the 
work  of  an  apostle  or  missionary  in  Cyprus,  Pamphylia,  Pisidia 
and  Lycaonia.  When  these  wandering  prophets  settled  down 
for  a  time  with  their  families,^  in  any  Christian  community, 
far  from  home  and  employment,  it  was  but  right  that  the  com- 
munity they  benefited  by  their  labours  should  support  them. 
St.  Paul  had  laid  down  the  principle  that  it  was  a  command- 
ment of  the  Lord's  that  "  they  which  proclaim  the  gospel  should 
live  of  the  gospel,"*  and  had  said  to  the  Galatian  Christians, 
"  let  him  that  is  taught  in  the  word  communicate  to  him  that 
teacheth  in  all  good  things."  ^  Primitive  Christians  had  also 
the  Lord's  promise  made  to  those  who  received  His  prophets.^ 
Hence  the  Christian  communities  made  regulations  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  wandering  prophets  who  gave  them  that  exhortation 
and  admonition  which  were  the  things  chiefly  sought  in  the 
meeting  for  edification.  The  prophets  were  to  have  the  first- 
fruits  of  wine  and  oil,  of  corn  and  bread,  of  oxen  and  sheep, 
of  clothing  and  of  money.''     The  local  churches  supported  the 

'  Matt.  X.  41.  '  Acts  xi.  28  ;    xxi.  10. 

3  1  Cor.  ix.  5.  4  1  Cor.  ix.  14 ;   Matt.  x.  10. 

5  Gal.  vi.  6.  6  Matt.  x.  41. 

7  Didache,  xiii.  :  "  But  every  true  prophet  who  will  settle  among  you 
is  worthy  of  his  support.  Liikewise  a  true  teacher,  he  also  is  wortliy, 
like  the  workman  of  his  support.     Every  first-fruit   then  of  the  products 


PROPHETS  99 

wandering  prophets  while  they  ssttled  among  them.  In  return 
the  prophets  exhorted  in  the  meetings  for  edification  and  pre- 
sided at  the  meetings  for  thanksgiving.' 

The  conception  that  a  prophet  was  inspired  to  speak  the  j 
Word  of  God  invested  him  with  such  a  sacred  authority  that 
his  position  would  have  been  completely  autocratic  had  it  not 
been  under  some  controlling  power.  This  power  of  control 
lay  in  the  fact  that  every  prophet  required  the  permission  or 
authorization  of  the  congregation  in  order  to  exercise  his  "  gift  " 
among  them.  This  authorisation  followed  the  testing  or  the 
recognition  whether  the  supposed  prophet  had  or  had  not  the 
true  spirit  of  Jesus.  The  power  of  testing  lay  in  the  witness 
of  the  Spirit,  which  was  living  in  every  Christian  and  in  every 
Christian  community.  For,  as  has  been  before  remarked,  the 
prophetic  ministry  rested  on  a  double  "  gift,"  or  charisma  ; 
one,  the  "  gift "  of  speaking  the  Word,  in  the  prophet,  and  the 
other,  in  the  members  of  the  Christian  community,  the  "  gift " 
of  discernment.''  The  possession  and  use  of  this  "  gift "  of 
testing  preserved  the  freedom  and  autonomy  of  the  local  Chris- 
tian churches  in  presence  of  men  who  were  persuaded  that  they 
spoke  in  the  name  of  God.     Every  prophet  had  to  submit  to 

of  the  wine-press  and  threshing-floor,  of  oxen  and  of  sheep,  thou  shalt 
take  and  give  to  the  prophets  ;  for  they  are  your  high-priests.  But  if  ye 
have  no  prophet,  give  it  to  the  poor.  If  thou  makest  a  baking  of  bread, 
take  the  first  of  it  and  give  according  to  the  commandment.  In  hke 
manner  also  when  thou  openest  a  jar  of  wine  or  oil,  take  the  first  of  it 
and  give  to  the  prophets  ;  and  of  money  and  clothing  and  every  possession 
take  the  first,  as  may  seem  right  to  thee,  and  give  according  to  the  com- 
mandment." 

'  Didache,  x.  7.  Tlie  mode  of  conducting  the  Eucharistic  meeting  is 
quite  unknown  except  the  one  fact  that  when  propliets  were  present  they 
led.  It  is  easy  to  conceive  a  collegiate  superintendence  of  the  meeting 
for  edification  ;  but  it  is  hardly  possible  to  think  of  a  collegiate  presidency 
at  the  dispensation  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  Did  the  prophets  select  one  of 
their  number  to  preside,  or  did  they  preside  in  turn  ?  We  do  not  know. 
Nor  can  we  get  out  of  this  difficulty  by  supposing  that  the  Lord's  Supper 
was  dispensed  in  the  family,  when  the  father  would  naturally  preside  ;  for 
St.  Paul's  description  clearly  implies  a  common  dispensation, 

2  Compare  pp.  70-72. 


iX 


100  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

be  tested  before  he  was  received  as  one  worthy  to  exhort  the 
Tjrotherhood  ;  and  his  decisions  or  admonitions  on  points  of 
.'discipHne  or  absolution  had  to  be  approved  by  the  congregation 
ere  they  were  enforced.  The  right  and  the  duty  of  Christian 
communities  to  test  every  one  who  came  with  a  prophetic 
message  was  urged  repeatedly  by  St.  Paul  and  in  other  New 
^Testament  writings.  The  apostle  insisted  that  all  prophets, 
apostles,  and  even  himself,  ought  to  be  tested  by  all  Christians 
to  whom  they  presented  themselves.  He  appealed  to  their 
power  of  judging  his  own  message.'  The  power  to  discriminate 
between  the  true  and  the  false  spiritual  gifts  was  a  special 
charisma  which  ought  to  be  used.^  The  Lord  had  warned  His 
followers  against  "  false "  prophets,  and  had  predicted  that 
they  would  bring  evil  upon  His  Church  ;  ^  and  St.  Paul,  after 
telling  the  Thessalonians  to  cherish  prophesyings,  insists  on 
their  using  their  power  of  discrimination.  The  same  command 
is  given  in  1  John  iv.  1."^  The  Church  of  Ephesus  was  praised 
for  trying  and  rejecting  men  who  called  themselves  apostles 
and  were  not.^  The  Churches  of  Smyrna  and  Thyatira  were 
blamed  for  the  untested  and  unrejected  teaching  which  they 
had  permitted.^ 

There  was  need  for  testing,  for  if  the  genuine  Old  Testament 
prophecy  was  confronted  with  "  gilds  "  of  diviners  and  sooth- 
sayers belonging  to  the  old  Semitic  naturalist  religions,  as  well 
as  with  colleges  of  Jewish  prophets  who  had  retained  the  ex- 
ternal prophetic  characteristics,  but  had  lost  the  true  spirit  of 
Jehovah,''  the  prophets  of  Jesus  also  had  their  rivals  and  their 
innocent  or  designing  imitators.  In  that  age  of  crumbling  faiths 
in  the  Graeco-Roman  world,  Eastern  religions  were  entering 

^   1  Cor.  X.  15  ;    xi.  13  ;    2  Cor.  xiii.  5,  C  ;    cf.  Rev.  ii.  2  ;    compare  H. 
Weinel,  Paulus  als  Kirehlicher  Organisator  (1899),  pp.  18,  19. 
^  1  Cor.  xii.  10  ;   cf.  vv.  1,  4. 

3  Matt.  vii.  15;  xxiv.  11. 

4  1  Thess.  V.  21  ;    1  John  iv.  1-3  ;   cf.  Didache,  x.  1,  2,  11  ;    xiii.  1. 

5  Rev.  ii.  2.  ^  ^g^  jj    14^  15  .  20. 
7  Deut.  xiii.  3  ;  Jer.  xxiii.  21-32. 


PROPHETS  101 

to  possess  the  land.      The  great  imperial  system  of  roads  and 
sea-routes  served  other  purposes  besides  the  traffic  of  trade, 
the  convey  of  troops,  or  the   ordinary  coming  and  going  of 
the  population.     Bands  of  itinerant  devotees,  the  professional 
prophets  and  priests  of  Syrian,  Persian,  and  perhaps  of  Indian 
cults,    passed    along    the    high-roads.     Solitary    preachers    of 
Oriental  faiths,  with  all  the  fire  of  missionary  zeal,  tramped  from 
town  to  town,  drawn  by  an  irresistible  impulse  towards  Rome, 
the  centre  of  civilization,  the  protectress  of  the  religions  of  her 
myriads  of  subject  peoples,  the  tribune  from  which,  if  a  speaker 
could  only  once  ascend  it,  he  might  address  the  world.    It  was 
the  age  of  wandering  preachers  and  teachers,  of  religious  ex- 
citements, of  curiosity  about  new  faiths,'  when  all  who  had 
something  new  to  teach  hawked  their  theories  as  traders  dragged 
about  and  exposed  their  merchandise.     We  need  not  suppose 
that  these  men  were  all  charlatans  or  self-conscious  impostors. 
We  must  not  thrust  aside  carelessly  and  without  question  the 
claims  made  by  the  prophets  and  preachers  of  many  of  these 
Eastern  faiths  to  the  possession  of  a  knowledge  of  hidden  powers 
and  processes  of  nature,  and  of  a  command  over  them.     Above 
all,  we  must  not  forget  the  strange  assimilative  character  of  so 
many  Oriental  faiths,  which  was   as   strong  in  Syria  and  Asia 
Minor  in  the  early  centuries  as  it  is  in  India  now.     Christianity 
attracted  men  then  as  now  ;  they  were  curious  about  it ;  they 
seized  on  sides  of  the  new  religion  which  they  could  best  appre- 
ciate, aiid  could  so  present  their  beliefs  as  to  be  able  to  plead 
that  they  themselves  were  Christians  of  a  more  sympathetic 
character  and  with  a' wider  outlook  than  others.      The  great 
cities   which   were   the   centres   of   trade   and   commerce — the 
ganglia  of  the  great  empire,  as  the  roads  were  its  nerve-system — 
Ephesus,  Corinth,  Thessalonica,  Rome,  where  we  find  the  Chris- 
tian prophets  most  active  within  the  Gentile  Cliristian  Church, 
were  the  very  places  where  this  pagan  Oriental  prophecy  most 

'  Compare  Wissowa,  Religion  und  Kultus  der  Romer  (1902),  pp.  78-83  ; 
Boissier,  La  Religion  Romaine  d'Augaste  aux  Antonins  (1878),  i.  354-403. 


102  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

abounded.  Nothing  hindered  the  presence  of  such  men  at 
the  meetings  for  edification ;  nothing  prevented  them  claiming 
to  speak  in  the  Spirit ;  only  the  SiaKpia-i?  lying  in  the  Chris- 
tian society,  only  the  power  of  discernment  and  testing  through 
that  "  gift  "  of  spiritual  insight  which  was  in  every  true  Christian, 
and  therefore  in  the  Christian  community,  prevented  the  claims 
of  such  men  to  be  inspired  guides  being  admitted. 

The  testing  was  for  the  purpose  of  finding  whether  the  pro- 
phetic "  gift "  was  genuine  or  not.  It  had  little  or  nothing 
to  do  with  the  external  appearance  of  the  prophet  or  with  the 
kind  of  utterance  which  he  selected  to  convey  his  message. 
The  question  was  :  Were  the  contents  of  the  prophetic  message 
such  as  would  come  from  the  spirit  of  Jesus  ?  had  it  the  self- 
evidencing  ring  about  it  ?  had  it  the  true  ethical  meaning  which 
must  be  in  a  message  from  the  Master  ? — something  which  dis- 
tinguished it  from  everything  heathenish  or  Jewish,  something " 
which  showed  that  the  prophet  had  drunk  deeply  at  the  well  of 
Christ  ? 

The  test  that  St.  Paul  gives  :  "  no  man  speaking  in  the  Spirit 
of  God  saith,  Jesus  is  anathema  ;  and  no  man  can  say  that 
Jesus  is  Lord,  but  in  the  Holy  Spirit "  '  may  seem  inadequate 
and  easily  eluded  ;  but  St.  Paul  is  not  delivering  a  short  verbal 
creed  ;  he  is  setting  forth  a  principle.  Prophecy  must  be  filled 
with  the  sense  of  the  Lordship  of  Jesus  over  the  believer's  heart, 
soul  and  life,  if  it  is  true  prophecy.^  In  the  later  days  of  the 
Didache  the  need  for  testing  was  felt  as  strongly,  if  not  more  so  J 

1  1  Cor.  xii.  3. 

2  The  test  given  in  1  John  iv.  1  :  "  Beloved,  beUeve  not  every  spirit, 
but  test  the  spirits,  whether  they  be  of  God  ;  because  many  false  prophets 
are  gone  out  into  the  world.  Hereby  knov/  ye  the  Spirit  of  God :  every 
spirit  which  confesseth  that  Jesus  Christ  is  come  in  the  flesh  is  of  God ; 
and  every  spirit  v/hich  confesseth  not  Jesus  (annulleth  Jesus)  is  not 
of  God,"  also  looks  Uke  a  creed  ;  but  what  follows  makes  us  see  that 
it  is  to  be  taken  as  a  principle  which  can  be  felt  and  which  means  much 
more  than  the  form  of  words  in  which  it  is  expressed.  In  both  cases  the 
statement  of  the_test  is  immediately  followed  by  an  exposition  of  the 
necessity  of  Christian  love  permeating  the  AvTioIe  Christian  Ufe.  ~" 


TEACHERS  103 

the  tests,  however,  took  a  much  more  mechanical  aspect.  The 
fine  spiritual  sense  which  the  apostle  trusted  to  has  gone  into 
the  background  and  some  wooden  maxims  have  taken  its  place. 
"■  Not  every  one  that  speaketh  in  the  spirit,"  says  the  Didache 
warningly,  "  is  a  prophet,  but  only  if  he  have  the  ways  of  the 
Lord."  '  The  phrase  "  ways  of  the  Lord  "  does  not,  taken  by 
itself,  suggests  anything  mechanical,  and  has  a  flavour  of  the 
old  spirituality.  But  the  subordinate  tests  appear  to  indicate 
a  degeneracy  both  in  the  prophetic  office  and  in  the  spiritual 
discernment  of  the  people.  For  the  prophetic  office  and  its 
discrimination  demanded  a  somewhat  high  tone  of  spiritual 
life,  and  might  very  easily  deteriorate.  In  this,  as  in  other 
things,  there  is  a  close  parallel  to  be  drawn  between  the  prophets 
of  the  New  and  of  the  Old  Testament. 

3.  The  third  class  of  persons  who  belonged  to  this  prophetic 
ministry  were  the  teachers  {(^ic^da-KuXoi). 

We  can  trace  their  presence  along  with  that  of  the  apostles 
and  the  prophets  in  the  promise  of  Jesus,  in  the  most  con- 
spicuous of  the  "  gifts  "  of  His  Spirit  to  the  apostolic  church, 
in  the  records  of  the  sub-apostolic  period.  Our  Lord  promised 
to  send  "  wise  men  and  scribes  " — a  "  gift "  to  be  recognized 
and  appreciated  by  His  followers,  and  rejected  with  hatred 
by  those  who  refused  His  salvation.^  St.  Paul  emphasized 
their  presence,  v/lien  he  said  that  God  had  set  in  the  Church 
"  thirdly  teachers."^  We  find  them  mentioned  tiiroughout  the 
apostolic  and  sub-apostolic  periods,  holding  an  honoured  place 
in  the  infant  Christian  communities. 

They  were  not  office-bearers  necessarily,  though  there  was 
nothing  to  prevent  their  being  chosen  to  office.     What  made 

'  Didache,  xi.  8.  The  suboixlinatc  tests  are :  A  prophet  who  orders 
a  meal  in  the  spirit  and  eateth  it ;  a  prophet  who  does  not  himself  practise 
what  he  teaches  ;  a  prophet  Avho  asks  for  money — are  all  false  prophets. 
But  a  prophet  who  has  the  "  ways  of  the  Lord,"  and  Avho  practises  more 
than  he  preaches  is  a  true  propliet.     {Did.  xi.  9-12.) 

-  Matt,  xxiii.  34  :  "  prophets,  v/ise  men  and  scribes."  Luke  xi.  49  : 
"  prophets  and  apostles."     Cf.  Matt.  x.  IL  3  i  Cor.  xii.  28. 


104  THE    PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

them  "  teachers  "  was  neither  selection  by  their  brethren  nor 
any  ceremony  of  setting  apart  to  perform  work  which  the  Church 
required  to  be  done.  They  were  "  teachers  "  because  they  had 
in  a  personal  way  received  from  the  Spirit  the.l'gift "  of  knoiv- 
ledge,  which  fitted  them  to  instruct  their  fellow  believers.  Their 
more  public  sphere  of  work  was  in  the  meeting  for  edification, 
where,  according  to  St.  Paul,  they  had  a  definite  place  assigned 
to  them  after  the  praise  and  before  the  prophesyings ;  '  but 
it  may  be  inferred  that  their  work  was  not  limited  to  public 
exhortation,  and  that  they  devoted  time  and  pains  to  the  in- 
struction of  catechumens  and  others  who  wished  to  be  more 
thoroughly  grounded  in  the  principles  of  Christian  faith  and 
life.^  St.  Paul  gives  us  some  indications  of  the  work  of  the 
"  teacher."  The  apostle  always  brought  to  the  communities 
he  had  founded  what  may  be  called  the  "  oral  Gospel "  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  or  the  saving  deeds  of  the  Evangelical  history, 
and  certain  institutions  and  commandments  of  the  Master.^ 
These  were  the  things  which  he  "  had  received,"  and  which  he 
"  handed  over  "  to  his  converts  to  be  stored  up  in  the  retentive 
Oriental  memory  uncorrupted  by  reading  and  writing.  He 
had  added  others — hidden  things  revealed  to  him  because  he 
was  a  prophet — which  he  called  "  mysteries,"  about  the  Resur- 
rection or  the  universality  of  the  Gospel.*  These  things  he 
had  handed  over  to  them  either  "  by  word  or  by  epistle."  ^ 
To  these  he  had  added  suggestions  and  opinions  of  his  own.^ 
All  these  things  formed  the  stock  of  material  on  which  the 
"  gift "  of  the  teacher  enabled  him  to  work  for  the  edification 

'  1  Cor.  xiv.  26.  ^  q^I.  vi.  6. 

3  We  can  see  from  1  Cor.  xv.  1-3,  how  St.  Paul  had  made  his  converts 
acquainted  with  the  sufferings,  death,  and  rising  again  of  our  Lord ;  how 
he  had  enlarged  on  His  character  and  ethical  qualities  (2  Cor.  viii.  9  ;  x.  1)  ; 
etc.,  etc.  He  had  taught  them  the  institutions  of  Jesus  (1  Cor.  xi.  23  ff.). 
We  have  references  to  "  commandments  "  of  the  Lord  in  1  Cor.  vii.  6,  25. 

*  1  Cor.  xv.  51  :  "  Behold  I  tell  you  a  mystery :  We  shall  not  all  sleep, 
but  we  shall  all  be  changed,  in  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  at 
the  last  trump."     1  Cor.  ii.  6  ff.     Cf.  xiii.  2  ;  xiv.  2. 

5  2  Thess.  ii.  15.  ^  i  Qor.  vii.  6,  10,  25. 


V 


TEACHERS  105 


of  the  community.  St.  Paul's  own  discourses  furnished  the 
teachers  in  his  communities  with  examples  of  the  way  in  which 
all  these  stores  of  communicated  knowledge  could  be  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  faith,  life  and  morals  of  the  members  of  the 
local  churches.  He  had  given  them  a  "  pattern  of  teaching  "  ' 
which  they  could  strive  to  imitate,  and  which  they  without  doubt 
did  copy  in  their  public  exhortations  or  private  instructions  and 
admonitions. 

From  St.  Paul's  epistles  it  would  appear  that  the  apostle 
expected  that  every  Christian  community  would  furnish  from 
its  own  membership,  the  teachers  required  to  instruct  the  mem- 
bers  ;  ^  but  it  is  evident,  at  least  when  we  get  beyond  the  apos- 
tolic period,  that  many  gifted  men,  whose  services  were  appre- 
ciated, went  from  church  to  church  teaching  and  preaching, 
and  that  without  having  any  pretension  to  the  prophetic  gift. 
Justin  Martyr  and  Tatian,  well-known  apologists  of  the  second 
century,  were  wandering  teachers  of  this  kind. 

Such  a  wandering  master,  we  learn  from  the  Didache,  belonged 
to  the  class  of  "honoured"  persons  {reTifxtjimepoi),  and  at  once 
attained  a  leading  position  in  the  community  he  entered  or 
to  which  he  belonged.  He  had  to  submit  to  the  same  tests 
as  the  prophet,  but  like  him,  when  once  received,  he  was 
honoured  as  one  who  spoke  the  "  Word  of  God."  ^ 

A  position  such  as  this,  carrying  with  it  both  privilege  and 
support,  would  be  sought  after  by  those  who  thought  more  of 
the  honoiu'able  position  in  which  the  teacher  stood  than  of  the 
serious  responsibilities  which  his  office  involved,  and  there  are 
warnings  both  in  apostolic  and  sub-apostolic  literature  that  the 
work  of  a  teacher  is  not  to  be  lightly  undertaken."*  It  is  perhaps 
worthy  of  remark  that  the  "  teachers  "  seem  to  have  maintained 
their  position  as  a  distinct  class  of  men,  apart  from  the  office- 

'  Rom.  vi.  17  :  ti'ttos  8i8a_)(^?j  ^  Eph.  iv.  15,  16. 

3  Didache,  xiii.  2  ;  xv.  2. 

4  James  iii.  1  ;  Barnabas,  Epistle  iv.  9  :  "  Being  desirous  to  write  many 
things  to  you,  not  as  your  teacher,  but  as  becometh  one  who  loves  you." 


106  J  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

bearers  of  a  local  church,  much  longer  than  the  prophets  did. 
'  In  the  general  overthrow  of  the  prophetic  "  ministry  "  during 
the  second  century  the  office  of  "  teacher  "  was  absorbed  by 
the  local  ministry  ;  but  "  teachers  "  apart  from  office-bearers 
seem  to  have  maintained  themselves  in  the  Church  for  some 
centuries/  and  some  churches,  notably  that  of  Alexandria, 
seem  to  have  possessed  large  numbers  of  teachers.^ 

This  prophetic  ministry  and  the  peculiar  place  it  occupied 
was  the  distinctive  feature  of  the  organization  of  the  Church 
of  Christ  during  the  apostolic  and  sub-apostolic  periods.  It 
gives  this  age  a  place  by  itself,  and  separates  it  from  all  other 
periods  of  the  Church's  history ;  for  it  must  be  remembered 
that  while  this  ministry  lasted  it  dominated  and  controlled. 
Whatever  administrative  organization  the  local  churches 
possessed  had  to  bend  before  the  authority  of  the  members  of 
this  prophetic  circle.  To  them  belonged  the  right  to  lead  the 
devotions  of  their  brethren — to  speak  the  "  Word  of  God  "  in 
the  meeting  for  edification,  and  to  preside  at  the  Eucharistic  ser- 
vice— and  to  influence  in  a  larj^e  but  indefinite  manner  the  whole 


^  Compare  the  curious  sentence  in  the  Apostolic  Constitutions  (VIII, 
xxxii.)  which  can  scarcely  be  earlier  than  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century: 
"  Let  him  that  teaches,  although  he  be  one  of  the  laity,  yet,  if  he  be  skilful 
in  the  word  and  grave  in  his  manners,  teach  ;  "  where  the  reference  is 
evidently  to  the  instruction  of  catechumens.  Tlie  teachers  of  the  famous 
catechetical  school  of  Alexandria  were  laymen  during  some  part  of  their 
time  as  teachers. 

Tiie  Christian  communities,  especially  in  large  towns,  must  have  needed 
teachers  for  Christian  schools  ;  for  all  teaching  within  pagan  lands  is 
closely  associated  with  idolatry.  TertuUian  {De  Idolatria,  x.)  has  discussed 
the  difficulties  of  schoolmasters  amidst  a  pagan  populace  ;  the  same 
difficulties  attend  native  Cliristians  in  India  now.  When  a  Ttlarathi  boy 
first  goes  to  school  he  is  placed  upon  a  small  carpet  and  a  board  covered 
Avith  I'ed  tile  dust  is  placed  before  him.  The  image  of  Saravasti,  the 
goddess  of  learning,  is  painted  on  the  board.  Then  the  master  sitting 
beside  him  first  worships  Ganesa  and  Saravasti,  and  teaches  the  boy  to 
make  the  letters  which  form  the  name  Ganesa.  The  difficulties  are  exactly 
those  which  TertuUian  describes. 

2  Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecd.  VII.  xxiv.  G  :  "  The  presbyters  and  the  teachers 
of  the  brethren  in  the  villages." 


THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY  107 

action  of  the  infant  Christian  communities.  Yet  they  were  not 
office-bearers  in  any  sense  of  the  word.  They  were  not  elected, 
nor  were  they  set  apart  by  any  ecclesiastical  action  to  a  place  of 
rule.  Their  vocation  was  immediate  and  personal.  They 
could  be  tested,  and  their  ministry  might  be  accepted  or  rejected, 
but  there  the  power  of  the  Church  with  regard  to  them  and  to 
their  ministry  came  to  an  end. 

They  appear  on  the  pages  of  the  apostolic  and  sub-apostolic 
literature  in  the  three  classes  which  have  been  described  ;  but 
the  divisions,  we  can  see,  represented  functions,  not  offices, 
nor  can  it  be  said  that  these  functions  were  separated  by  any  hard 
and  fast  line. 

The  apostle  or  wandering  missionary  was  also  a  prophet  and, 
a  teacher  ;  his  vocation  required  him  to  be  all  three.  The 
prophet  might  become  an  apostle,  if  he  gave  himself  permanently 
to  the  aggressive  creative  work  which  was  the  characteristic 
of  the  apostolic  activity  ;  and  he  was  also  a  teacher,  for  his 
prophetic  utterances  must  often  have  been  teaching  of  the  highest 
and  most  stimulating  kind.  But  a  teacher  could  fulfil  the  special 
work  of  his  vocation  without  having  the  "  gift "  of  revelation 
added  to  that  of  knowledge. 

In  all  three  classes  we  can  discern  the  effects  of  a  real  out- 
pouring of  the  Spirit,  imparting  special  spiritual  gifts,  and 
creating  for  the  service  of  the  infant  Christian  communities 
a  ministry  which  "  spoke  the  Word  of  God  "  in  the  same  sense 
as  did  the  prophets  of  the  Old  Testament  Dispensation.  St. 
Paul  was  a  prophet  in  the  same  sense  that  Isaiah  was,  and  the 
author  of  the  Apocalypse  had  visions  as  vivid  as  those  of  Ezekiel.^ 
The  one  great  difference  between  the  prophesying  of  the  two 


I  Compare  I'lumptrc,  Theology  and  Life,  p.  90  :  "  Strange  as  the  thought 
may  seem  to  us,  there  were  in  that  age  (the  apostoHc)  some  hundreds  it 
may  be,  of  men  as  truly  inspired  as  Isaiah  or  Ezekicl  had  been,  as  St.  Paul 
or  St.  Peter  then  were,  speaking  words  which  were,  as  truly  as  any  that 
were  ever  spoken,  inspired  words  of  God,  and  yet  all  record  of  them  has 
vanished." 


108  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

dispensations  was  that  the  gift  was  much  more  widely  bestowed 
in  the  New  than  it  had  been  in  the  Old  Dispensation. 

It  seems  to  be  impossible  to  draw  any  line  of  demarcation 
between  the  prophecy  of  the  Old  and  that  of  the  New  Testament, 
except  that  the  latter  partook  of  the  universalist  character 
of  the  new  revelation  of  the  Kingdom  which  our  Lord  pro- 
claimed, and  the  "  gift "  was  imparted  to  Gentiles  as  well  as 
to  Jews.  The  same  outstanding  features  characterized  the 
prophets  and  prophecy  in  the  two  dispensations.  In  both  cases 
the  prophetic  "  call "  came  to  the  prophet  personally  and  im- 
mediately in  a  unique  experience  ;  and  when  the  "  call  "  came 
everything  else  had  to  be  set  aside,  and  the  "  word  "  from  God 
had  to  be  spoken.  It  is  possible  to  compare  narrowly  St.  Paul 
and  Isaiah,  St.  John  and  Ezekiel,  Polycarp  and  Jeremiah. 
In  neither  case  was  the  prophetic  "  call "  a  call  to  office  in  the 
Church.  The  New  Testament  prophets  were  no  more  presbyters 
or  bishops  in  virtue  of  their  "  call "  than  were  the  Old  Testa- 
ment prophets  elevated  to  the  priesthood  in  Israel ;  and  in  both 
cases  the  regular  office-bearers  had  to  give  way  to  and  bow 
before  the  men  through  whom  the  Spirit  of  God  spoke. 

In  Old  Testament  prophecy,  as  in  the  prophecy  of  the  New 
Testament,  the  Spirit  of  God  was  given  in  a  larger,  measure 
to  some  men  and  in  a  smaller  degree  to  others,  and  in  each  case 
the  natural  faculties  of  the  prophet  had  full  play  to  exert  them- 
selves according  to  the  capacities  of  the  man.  There  were 
gradations  in  the  prophetic  order  from  men  like  St.  Paul  and 
Isaiah,  who  stood  in  the  foremost  rank,  to  the  nameless  prophet 
whom  the  lion  slew,  or  the  impetuous  prophet  who  interrupted 
his  brother  in  the  meeting  of  the  Corinthian  congregation. 

In  both  cases  true  prophecy  was  surrounded  with  a  fringe  of 
prophet  life  which  was  hostile,  and  which  was  inspired  by  a  spirit 
at  variance  with  the  purposes  of  Jehovah  and  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  Jesus.  In  the  Old  Testament,  as  in  the  New,  there 
was  a  marked  tendency  towards  deterioration  within  the  pro- 
phetic order. 


THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY  109 

In  both  cases  the  power  to  discriminate  between  the  true 
and  the  false  prophecy,  between  the  man  who  spoke  full  of  the 
Spirit  of  God  and  the  member  of  the  prophetic  "  gild,"  was  left 
to  the  spiritual  discernment  of  the  people  spoken  to.  The 
discerning  faculty  was  often  at  fault ;  pretenders  were  received 
by  and  misled  the  faithful.  Jeremiah  had  to  protest  against 
the  way  in  which  the  people  received  men  who  claimed  to  be 
prophets,  and  Origen  had  to  repudiate  the  prophets,  or  their 
caricatures,  whom  Celsus  described  with  graphic  irony.'  Yet 
this  power  of  spiritual  insight  was  the  only  touchstone,  and, 
indeed,  there  could  have  been  no  other  in  the  last  resort.  For 
men  can  never  get  rid  of  their  personal  responsibility  in  spiritual 
things. 

'  Origen,  Contra  Celsum,  vii.  9  :  "  Again  inasmuch  as  Celsus  announces 
tliat  he  will  describe  from  personal  observation  and  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  facts,  the  manners  peculiar  to  the  prophets  of  Phenicia  and  Palestine, 
let  us  consider  these  statements.  Firstly,  he  declares  that  there  are 
several  kinds  of  prophcsyings,  although  he  gives  no  list  of  them  .... 
'  The  prophets,'  he  says,  '  are  many  and  unknown  persons.  They  are 
apparently  and  very  readily  moved  to  speak  a.s  if  In  a  divine  ecstasy 
without  any  special  occasion  both  at  the  time  of  service  and  at  other  times. 
Some  go  about  as  beggars  and  visit  encampments  and  towns.  Every 
one  of  them  says  readily  and  simply  :  '  I  am  Cxod,'  or  '  I  am  the  Son  of 
God,'  or  '  I  am  the  Holy  Spirit.  I  have  come  ;  for  the  world  is  about  to 
be  destroyed  ;  you,  O  men,  will  be  lost  through  your  wickedness.  I  am 
willing  to  save  you  ;  and  you  shall  see  me  again  coming  with  lieavenly 
power.  Blessed  is  he  who  now  worships  me.  On  all  others  I  shall  cast 
eternal  fire,  on  cities  and  lands  and  on  men.  Men  who  do  not  recognize 
their  impending  judgment  will  repent  and  groan  in  vain  ;  but  those  who 
have  hearkened  unto  me,  I  will  protect  for  ever.'  With  these  threats 
they  mingle  words,  half-frantic,  meaningless  and  altogether  mysterious, 
whose  significance  no  sensible  man  could  discover.  For  words  that  are 
vague  and  without  meaning  give  every  fool  and  wzard  an  opportunity 
of  giving  any  particular  meaning  they  wish  on  any  matter,  to  what  has  been 
said."-  One  must  remember  that  Celsus  was  what  would  now  be  called 
a  cultured  agnostic.  His  statements  ar«  not  unlike  some  criticisms  of 
the  Salvation  Army  preachers.- 


The  Church   of  the   First  Century 
The   Churches  Creating  their   Ministry 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE    CHURCHES    CREATING   THEIR   MINISTRY 

IN  approaching  the  subject  of  the  ministry  of  the  local 
Christian  communities  it  may  be  well  to  note  these  things 
at  the  outset.  We  have  abundant  evidence  of  the  thorough 
independence  of  the  local  churches  during  the  apostolic  age, 
whether  we  seek  for  it  in  the  epistles  of  St.  Paul  or  in  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles.'  We  must  remember  the  uniquely  Christian 
correlation  of  the  three  thoughts  of  leadership,  service  and 
"'  gifts  "  ;  leadership  depends  on  service,  and  service  is  rendered 
possible  by  the  bestowal  of  "  gifts  "  of  the  Spirit  which  enable 
the  recipients  to  serve  their  brethren.^  The  possession  of  these 
"  gifts  "  of  the  Spirit  was  the  evidence  of  the  presence  of  Jesus 
within  the  community,  and  gave  the  brotherhood  a  divine 
authority  to  exercise  rule  and  oversight  in  the  absence  of  any 
authoritative  formal  prescriptions  about  a  definite  form  of 
government.^  We  have  also  to  bear  in  mind  the  general  evidence 
which  exists  to  show  that  there  was  a  gradual  growth  of  the 
associative  principle  from  looser  to  more  compact  forms  of 
organization.'*    Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  the  members 

^  Compare  what  has  been  said  on  pp.  32,  33  ;   54-57. 

-  Compare  what  has  been  said  on  pp.  G2  ft". 

3  Compare  p.  33  and  pp.  G9  ft'. 

^  Tliis  growth  of  the  associative  piinciplc  is  seen  m  the  names  given  to 
beUevers  as  a  united  company.  The  earhcst  title  was  disciples  (ixaOyTal), 
which  implied  that  Jesus,  their  Lord,  was  also  their  teacher,  and  their 
only  teacher — for  Jesus  expressly  forbade  His  followers  calling  any  one  but 
Himself  Master,  Teacher,  Father  or  Lord  (Matt,  xxiii.  8-10)  ;  and  the 
command  was  repeated  by  St.  Paul  when  he  forbade  the  Christians  of 
Corinth  to  call  themselves  the  followers  of  any  of  the  apostles  (1  Cor.  iii. 
CM.  ^13  8 


114    THE  CHURCHES   CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

of  these  earliest  congregations  of  believers  were  well  acquainted 
with  social  organization  of  various  kinds  which  entered  into  their 
daily  life  in  the  world.  When  we  remember  these  facts  it  need 
not  surprise  us  that  though  in  the  end  the  organization  of  all 
the  churches  was,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  pretty  much  the  same, 
this  common  form  of  government  may  have  arisen  indepen- 
dently and  from  a  variety  of  roots  which  may  at  least  be  guessed 

3-9).  The  name  Teacher,  with  the  corresponding  term  disciples,  lingered 
long  in  a  sporadic  way  in  Christian  literature  (for  example  in  Justin  Martyr, 
Apol.  i.  13),  and  in  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  vi.  p.  23),  and  the  word 
disciples  occurs  frequently  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  It  is  a  name  which 
suggests  a  purely  personal  relationship  to  Jesus,  and  it  was  soon  displaced 
in  favour  of  other  designations  which  implied  association  among  the 
followers  of  Jesus.  Among  them  we  may  select  the  terms  saints,  brethren, 
the  people  of  the  Way.  The  last  mentioned — ol  t^s  68ou  ovres — is  spe- 
cially interesting.  It  suggests  a  common  worship  and  therefore  an  orga- 
nization for  worship.  It  implies  groups  of  men  and  women,  who,  though 
far  apart  from  each  other,  are  united  in  spite  of  intervening  space  by  the 
ties  of  a  common  worship.  The  Christians  in  Damascus  and  by  implication 
those  in  Jerusalem,  are  so  called  (Acts  ix.  2  ;  xxii.  4).  It  was  the  name 
given  to  the  Christians  at  Ephesus  (Acts  xxiv.  14)  ;  it  was  appUed  by 
St.  Paul  to  himself  when  justifying  the  special  services  of  the  Christian 
worship  as  distinguished  from  the  Jewsh  (Acts  xxiv.  14).  St.  Paul  himself 
usually  employs  the  terms  saints  or  brethren  when  he  speaks  of  his  fellow 
Chi-istians.  The  brethren  or  the  saints  who  form  an  independent  com- 
munity, whether  in  a  house  or  in  a  town  or  in  a  province,  are  called  by 
St.  Paul  a  Church ;  and  he,  in  his  epistles  to  the  Galatians  and  to  the 
Corinthians,  uses  the  same  word  to  denote  all  the  brethren,  wherever  they 
may  be.  These  two  terms  saints  and  brethren  are,  like  the  phrase  those  of 
the  Way,  collective,  and  imply  organization  of  some  kind  or  other.  When 
the  brethren  or  the  saints  met  together  for  worship  the  meeting  or  the 
building  in  which  they  met  was  frequently  called  a  synagogue  (James  ii.  2), 
and  this  word  was  used  not  only  by  the  judaising  Cliristians  (Epiphanius, 
XXX.  18);  but  also  by  the  Marcionites,  though  they  ■\^■ere  the  Cliristians 
furthest  removed  from  the  Jewish  believers  in  Jesus.  The  oldest  inscrip- 
tion stating  that  the  building  on  which  it  is  carved  was  used  as  a  Christian 
place  of  worship  comes  from  Syria,  and  states  that  the  erection  A\as  a 
Marcionist  church :  'XwayiDyrj  MapKttovicrrcoi'  KO)fxr]s  Ae^a^wv  tov  Kvpiov 
KOL  SwT'Jjpos  'IrjcTov  XpLcTTov.  It  datcs  from  318  a.d.  (Compare  Le  Bas 
and  Waddington,  Inscriptions  No.  2558,  iii.  583).  Compare  Weizsackerj 
The  Apostolic  Age,  i.  45-8  (Eng.  Trans.).  Harnack  2''exte  und  Unter- 
suchungen,  II.  v.  p.  25,  or  Enghsh  Translation,  Sources  of  the  Apostolic 
Canons,  p.  22,  n.  10,  for  the  use  of  Teacher.  For  the  general  question  of 
designations,  cf.  Harnack,  Expositor,  1887,  Jan. -June,  pp.  322-4. 


SEVERAL   TYPES   tF   •RGANIZATItN  115 

if  they  cannot  be  proved.  There  are  traces  of  several  primitive 
types  of  organization  within  the  churches  of  the  apostolic  age. 

The  first  notice  we  have  of  organization  within  a  local  church 
is  given  us  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  when, 
at  the  suggestion  of  the  apostles,  seven  men  were  chosen  for 
what  is  called  the  service  of  tables.  This  took  place  probably 
in  the  year  34  a.d.  These  men  were  selected  and  set  apart  to 
take  care  of  the  poor  and  to  administer  the  charity  of  the  con- 
gregation. 

It  is  too  often  forgotten  that  this  service  had  not  the  second- 
rate  importance  which  now  belongs  to  it  in  ecclesiastical  or- 
ganization. It  is  plain  that  in  apostolic  times  the  primary 
duty  overshadowing  all  others,  was  that  those  who  had  this 
world's  goods  should  help  their  poorer  brethren  who  had  need. 
The  sayings  of  our  Lord  were  ringing  in  their  ears  :  "  If  thou 
wouldest  be  perfect,  go,  sell  all  that  thou  hast  and  give  to  the 
poor,  and  thou  shalt  have  treasm'e  in  heaven  "  ;  "  Every  one 
that  hath  left  houses  and  lands  for  My  name's  sake  shall 
receive  an  hundredfold  and  shall  inherit  eternal  life  "  ;  "^  "  Seek 
ye  His  kingdom,  and  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you  .  .  . 
sell  that  ye  have  and  give  alms  ;  make  for  yourselves  purses 
which  wax  not  old."  -  Their  devotion  to  the  invisible  God 
was  to  manifest  itself  in  practical  love  to  the  visible  brethren.^ 
The  first  duty  of  presbyters,  according  to  Polycarp,  was  to  be 
compassionate  and  merciful,  "  visiting  all  the  infirm,  not  neg- 
lecting a  widow  or  an  orphan  or  a  poor  man  "  ;  "*  and  he  calls 
widows    "  God's    altar " — a    phrase    repeated    by    Tertullian.^ 

I  Matt.  xix.  21,  23  ;  29.  ^  L^i^e  xii.  31-33. 

3  1  John  iv.  20.  •*  Polycarp,  Philippians,  U. 

5  Polycarp,  Philippians,  4  :  Ovaia(TTrjpiov  0€oD.  TertuUian,  Ad  Uxor. 
i.  7  :  aram  Dei.  The  phrase  OvaLaarypiov  ®eov  is  used  in  the  Apostolic 
ConstitiUium  to  denote  widows,  orphans  and  the  poor  aided  by  the  con- 
gregation, ii.  2G  :  "  Let  the  Avidows  and  orphans  be  esteemed  as  repre- 
senting the  altar  of  burnt-otlering  "  ;  iv.  3  :  "  But  an  orphan  who,  by 
reason  of  his  youth,  or  he  that  by  feebleness  of  old  age,  or  the  incidence  of 
disease,  or  the  bringing  up  of  many  children,  receives  alms  .  .  .  shall 
be  esteemed  an  altar  to  Cod."     The  phrase  is  almost  always  accompanied 


>y 


116     THE   CHURCHES  CREATING   THEIR  MINISTRY 

These  men  were  chosen  to  fill  the  highest  administrative  position 
which  the  Church  could  give,  and  were  to  take  charge  in  the  name 
of  the  community  of  the  most  sacred  of  all  ecclesiastical  duties. 

(The  office  instituted  was  required  by  the  ordinary  and  permanent 
needs  of  the  Christian  society,  for  the  Lord  had  said  that  the 
poor  were  always  to  be  with  them.' 

A  .few  years  later  we  read  of  money  collected  outside  Palestine 
and  brought  for  distribution  among  the  poor  of  the  Church  in 
Jerusalem  by  Barnabas  and  Saul,  who  placed  it  in  the  hands  of 
men  who  are  called  elders  or  'preshyters.  Unless  we  are  to  be- 
lieve that  the  appointment  of  the  seven  was  a  merely  temporary 
expedient,  it  is  only  natural  to  suppose  that  the  duty  of  distri- 
buting money  among  the  poor  was  performed  by  the  men  who 
were  appointed  by  the  Church  to  do  it,  or  by  others  appointed 
in  the  same  way  and  for  the  same  purpose  ;  and  the  natural 
inference  is  that  the  Seven  of  Acts^vi.  were  the  dders  qf^Acts  xi., 
and  that  we  have  in  the  narrative  the  account  of  the  beginnings 
of  the  organization  as  a  whole  in  the  Church  at  Jerusalem,  and 
not  merely  the  institution  of  a  special  order  of  the  Christian 
ministry.^ 

Avith  the  thought  that  those  who  receive  alms  are  to  pray  for  their  bene- 
factors. 

'  Dr.  Hatch  in  his  Organization  of  the  Earhf  Chridian  Churches,  pp. 
32-36  (1st  ed.),  has,  I  think,  exaggerated  somcAvhat  the  pauperism  of  the 
early  centuries  throughout  the  Roman  Empire  ;  but  the  case  of  Jerusalem 
must  have  been  peculiar.  The  jjoijulation  of  the  city  was  largely  supported 
by  the  profits  the  citizens  made  from  the  crowds  of  pilgrims  Avho  came 
from  all  parts  of  the  Jewish  Dispersion  to  the  great  festivals.  Conversion 
to  the  Christian  faith  must  have  deprived  the  converts  of  this  means  of 
support  and  brought  them  into  a  chronic  state  of  poverty. 

-  Dr.  Lightfoot  calls  the  attempt  to  identify  the  iSeven  Avith  the  elders 
afterwards  mentioned  in  the  church  at  Jerusalem  a  "  strange  perversity," 
although  it  has  the  support  of  Boehmer  {Diss.  Jur.  Eccl.  p.  373  ff.),  of 
Ritschl  {Entstehung  der  AUkatholisch.  Kirche,  2nd  ed.,  p.  355  ff.),  and  of 
Lange  {Apostol.  Zeitalt.  ii.  75),  and  GAvatkin  regards  the  idea  as  a  possible 
one  (Hastings'  Bible  Dictionanj,  i.  440,  574)  ;  it  appears  to  me  that  it  must 
be  made  unless  avc  supi:)Ose  that  the  appointment  of  the  Seven  Avas  a  merely 
temporary  expedient  to  provide  for  an  immediate  necessity,  or  discredit 
the  narrative  altogether,  which  is  Avhat  not  even  such  a  destructive  critic 


THE   SEVEN   AND   THE   VILLAGE  COMMUNITY     117 

The  Church  in  Jerusalem  appointed  seven  men.  Tlic  apostles 
suggested  the  number.  "  Look  ye  out  therefore,  brethren, 
from  among  you  seven  men."  ^  They  are  never  called  deacons  ; 
the  Seven  is  the  technical  name  they  were  known  by.  Philip, 
one  of  them,  is  not  called  "  Philip  the  Deacon,"  but  "  Philip 
one  of  the  Seven."  '  Why  this  name  ?  To  say  with  Dr.  Light- 
foot  that  the  number  is  mystical  is  scarcely  an  explanation, 
and  it  is  not  likely  that  it  was  merely  haphazazd.  The  Hebrew 
village  community  was  ruled  by  a  small  corporation  of  seven 
men,^  as  the  Hindu  village  is  managed  by  the  council  of  the  Five 
or  the  Punchayat.  The  Seven  was  a  title  as  well  known  in 
Palestine  as  the  Five  is  now  in  India.  The  Church  in  Jerusalem, 
in  founding  their  official  council  of  administration,  created  an 
entirely  new  organization  required  by  the  needs  of  the  young 
community,  but  one  which  brought  with  it  associations  which 
had  deep  roots  in  the  past  social  life  of  the  people.  Modern 
missionary  enterprise,  which  has  the  same  problems  of  organi- 
zation before  it  as  confronted  primitive  Christianity,  frequently 
sheds  light  on  the  procedure  of  the  latter.  The  Church  of 
Scotland  (Established)  missionaries  at  Darjeeling,  who  have 
based  the  organization  of  their  native  church  on  the  Hindu 
Punchayat ;  the  missionaries  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  of 
England,  who  have  laid  hold  on  the  village  representative 
system  in  China  ;  Bishop  Patteson,  who  made  a  similar  use 
of  the  native  organizations  in  the  South  Seas — have  all  uncon- 
sciously followed  in  the  footsteps  of  the  apostles  when  they 
suggested  the  Jewish  village  government  as  a  basis  for  the 
organization  of  the  primitive  Church  in  Jerusalem. 

This  earliest  example  of  Christian  ecclesiastical  organization 

as   Schmiedel  is  inclined  to  do  {Encyc.  Bihlica,  art.  Commiimty  of  Goods, 

879,  880). 

'  Acts  vi.  3.  -  Acts  xxi.  8. 

3  Josephus,  Anliq.  IV.  viii.  14,  38  ;  Bdl.  Jud.  II.  xx.  5.  Compare 
Schiirer,  Gesch.  d.  Jiidischcn  Volkes  im  Zcitall.  Jtsu  Christ i  (189S),  ii. 
ITS  (3rd  ed.).  Scliiircr  quotes  from  the  Talmud,  Megilla.  26a,  where  the 
■'  Seven  "  of  the  town  also  appear. 


118    THE   CHURCHES   CREATING   THEIR   MINISTRY 

contains  in  it  three  interesting  elements — apostolic  guidance 
and  sanction  ;  the  self-government  and  independence  of  the 
community  evinced  in  the  responsibility  for  good  government 
laid  upon  the  whole  membership  ;  and,  as  a  result,  a  repre- 
sentative system  of  administration  suggested  by  the  every- 
day surroundings  of  the  people. 

When  we  trace  the  expansion  of  Christianity  and  the  creation 
of  Christian  communities  outside  Jerusalem,  we  have  no  such 
distinct  picture  of  the  beginnings  of  their  organization  as  is 
given  in  Acts  vi.,  but  there  are  indications  of  what  took  place. 
The  preaching  of  the  Gospel  gave  rise  to  Christian  communities 
in  various  parts  of  Palestine  which  regarded  the  Church  at 
Jerusalem  as  their  common  mother  church,  and  all  these  com- 
munities together  made  the  Church  of  God  which  St.  Paul  perse- 
cuted.'' It  is  probable  also  that  when  this  Judeo-Christianity 
spread  beyond  the  bounds  of  Palestine  throughout  Syria  and 
Cilicia,^  the  community  in  the  capital  of  Judaism,  presided  over 
by  its  college  of  office-bearers  with  St.  James  at  their  head, 
was  regarded  as  the  mother  church  and  the  centre  of  the  whole 
movement.  They  had  before  them  the  example  of  Judaism 
which  appeared  one  visible  whole  centred  in  the  great  council 
of  the  elders  in  Jerusalem. 

Further,  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  relates  that  Paul  and  Barna- 
bas left  behind  them  at  Derbe,  Lystra  and  Iconium,  communities 
of  Christians  with  elders  at  their  head.  We  are  told  that  the 
apostles  "  appointed  for  them  elders  in  every  church."  ^  The 
word,  ■)(eipoToi')'i(Tai>Te9,  means  strictly  to  elect  by  popular 
vote.  It  suggests  that  Paul  and  Barnabas  followed  the  example 
of  their  brethren  at  Jerusalem,  and  suggested  and  superintended 
an  election  of  office-bearers,  and  the  title  "  elders  "  {irpea-^vrepoi) 
was  probably  derived  from  the  Church  of  Jerusalem.  It  need 
not  have  been  so,  however,  for  the  word  was  common  enough 
among  the  Greeks,  and  the  more  mature  men  in  the  congregations 

I  Gal.  i.  13  ;   1  Cor.  xv.  9.  '  Gal  i.  22. 

3  Acts  xiv.  2.3  :  p^ei/DOToi/ijaavTcs  Se  avroi^  Trpea/SvTepovi  kut  iKKX-qcriav. 


OFFICE-BEARERS   OF   THE   KINDRED   OF  JESUS     119 

would  be  naturally  selected.^  A  second  and  very  different 
type  of  organization,  though  capable  of  being  joined  with  the 
first,  also  comes  to  us  from  the  primitive  Church  in  Jerusalem. 
The  accounts  of  the  earliest  condition  of  the  Church,  whether 
taken  from  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  or  from  the  Epistles  of 
St.  Paul,  reveal  an  independent  self-governing  community 
under  the  guidance  of  the  apostles  St.  Peter  and  St.  John. 
The  leadership  of  these  two  apostles  is  conspicuous  throughout 
the  first  eleven  chapters  of  the  Book  of  Acts.  Then  there  is 
a  sudden  change  which  is  quite  unexplained,  and  in  the  twelfth 
chapter  (ver.  17)  and  onwards  St.  James,  the  brother  of  our  Lord, 
is  seen  to  be  in  a  position  of  pre-eminence.^  The  letters  of 
St.  Paul  also  reveal  the  change,  but  equally  give  no  hint  of  when 
it  took  place  or  of  the  causes  which  led  to  it.  But  if  canonical 
Scripture  tells  us  nothing  about  the  reasons  for  the  change, 
tradition  and  early  Church  history  have  a  good  deal  to  say  about 
it.  It  is  quite  impossible  to  explain  the  continuous  and  marked 
influence  of  St.  James,  on  any  theory  of  the  organization  of 
the  Church  at  Jerusalem  which  makes  it  borrow  its  constitution 
from  the  Jewish  Synagogue  system.  When  we  read  the  story 
of  the  election  of  his  successors  we  have  suggestions  cf  another 
and  very  different  organization.  The  James,  who  was  the 
recognized  and  honoured  head  of  the  community  in  Jerusalem, 
was  the  eldest  male  surviving  relative  of  our  Lord.^  We  are  told 
by  Eusebius,  quoting,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted,  ftom  Hege- 
sippus,  that  after  the  martyrdom  of  St.  James  and  the  fall  of 
Jerusalem,  the  remaining  apostles  and  personal  disciples  of 
our  Lord,  with  iliose  that  were  related  to  our  Lord  according  to  the 
flesh,  the  greater  part  of  them  being  yet  living,  met  together 

"  Deissmann,  Bib.  Studies  (Eng.  Trans.),  pp.  154-157.  The  names  which 
afterwards  came  to  denote  fixed  offices  in  tlie  Church  have  all  general  as 
well  as  technical  uses,  and  this  adds  greatly  to  the  difficulty  of  investigation. 

2  Acts  xii.  17  ;  xv.  13  ;  xxi.  18  ;  Gal.  i.  19  ;  ii.  9,  12.  This  is  confirmed 
by  later  tradition.  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccl.  II.  i.  2,  3. 

3  ]\Iatt.  xiii.  55  ;  Mark  vi.  3  ;  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccles.  I.  xii.  4  ;  II, 
i.  2,  3  ;  III.  xi.  1. 


120    THE   CHURCHES  CREATING   THEIR  MINISTRY 

and  unanimously  selected  Symeon  to  fill  the  vacant  place.' 
In  another  passage  he  says  that  Symeon  was  the  son  of  Clopas 
our  Lord's  paternal  uncle,  and  adds  that  "  he  was  put  forward 
by  all  as  the  second  in  succession,  being  the  cousin  of  the  Lord  "  ; 
in  a  third  he  speaks  of  "  the  child  of  the  Lord's  paternal  uncle, 
the  aforesaid  Symeon,  son  of  Clopas,"  and  in  a  fourth  he  tells 
us  that  Hegesippus  relates  that  Clopas  was  "  the  brother  of 
Joseph."  ^  In  short  he  dwells  pertinaciously  on  the  natural 
kinship  between  the  head  of  the  primitive  Christianity  in  Jerusa- 
lem and  our  Lord.  The  last  glimpse  we  have  of  our  Lord's 
kinsfolk  has  been  recorded  by  the  same  gossipy  writer,  who 
made  it  his  business  to  preserve  such  details,  and  it  reveals  them 
at  the  head  of  the  Jewish  Christian  community.  He  tells  us 
that  in  the  fifteenth  year  of  the  Emperor  Domitian  "  there  still 
survived  kinsmen  of  the  Lord,  grandsons  of  Judas,  who  was 
called  the  Lord's  brother  according  to  the  flesh."  They  were 
dragged  to  Rome  and  brought  before  the  Emperor.  He  ques- 
tioned them.  They  showed  him  their  hands  horny  with  holding 
the  plough,  and  said  that  their  whole  wealth  amounted  to  about 
9,000  denarii,  the  value  of  thirty-nine  acres  {irXeOpa)  of  land, 
which  they  cultivated  themselves  and  on  which  they  paid  taxes. 
The  Emperor  contemptuously  sent  them  back  to  Palestine, 
and  there  they  were  made  the  rulers  of  the  Church  because  they 
had  been  martyrs  and  were  of  the  lineage  of  the  Lord.  They 
lived  till  the  reign  of  Trajan,  and  their  names  were  James  and 
Zoker.^ 

A  succession  in  the  male  line  of  the  kindred  of  Jesus,  where 
the  eldest  male  relative  of  the  founder  succeeds,  where  the 
election  to  office  is  largely  regulated  by  a  family  council,  and 
where  two  can  rule  together,  has  no  analogy  with  any  form  of 

I  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccl.  III.  xi.  1,  2. 

^  Ihid.  xi.  1 ,  2  ;  xxxii.  4  ;  IV.  xxii.  4. 

3  Ihid.  III.  XX.  1-8  :  rot'S  Se  airoXvOevTat;  yjyy'jaacrOai  twv  iKKX-qaiutv, 
uxrav  8?)  fxaprvpa';  oftov  /cat  utto  yeVovs  oi'ras  tov  Kvpiov.  For  the 
names  of  the  two  young  men,  see  the  ecclesiastica.1  historian  Phihp- 
pus  of  Side,  in  the  fragment  printed  in  Cramer,  Anecdota  Oraeca,  ii.  88, 


OFFICE-BEARERS  IN  THE   PAULINE  CHURCHES    121 

organization  known  in  the  Christian  Church.  But  the  type  of 
organization  is  easily  recognizable.  It  was,  and  is  to  this  day, 
a  common  Oriental  usage  that  the  headship  of  a  religious  society 
is  continued  in  the  line  of  the  founder's  kindred  according  to 
Eastern  line  of  succession,  from  eldest  male  surviving  relative 
to  eldest  male  surviving  relative,  whether  brother,  uncle,  son 
or  cousin.  Here  again  we  have  a  Christian  community  organ- 
izing itself ,  and  that  under  apostolic  sanction,  on  a  plan  borrowed 
from  familiar  social  custom.^ 

When  we  turn  to  the  churches  which  owed  their  being  to  the 
apostolic  work  of  St.  Paul,  we  find  the  independence  and  self- 
government  evidently  taken  for  granted  and  formulated  in 
principles  laid  down  by  the  apostle  in  his  epistles.  The  churches 
at  Rome  and  at  Corinth  were  churches  because  the  presence 
and  power  of  Christ  were  manifested  within  the  Christian  fellow- 
ship in  a  series  of  "  gifts,"  which  provided  everything  necessary 
for  their  corporate  life  as  churches,  organized  according  to  any 
form  of  self-government  which  recommended  itself  to  them. 
There  is  not  a  trace  of  the  idea  that  the  churches  had  to  be 
organized  from  above  in  virtue  of  powers  conferred  by  our  Lord  / 
officially  and  specially  upon  certain  of  their  members.  On 
the  contrary  the  power  from  above,  which  was  truly  there, 
was  in  the  commmiity,  a  direct  gift  from  the  Master  Himself. 

We  find  in  the  earlier  Epistles  ^  of  St.  Paul  traces  of  men  who 
exercised  rule  or  at  least  leadership  of  some  kind  within  the 
churches.^  They  may  have  been  elected  ofl&ce-bearers  or  they 
may  have  been  men  who,  without  being  office-bearers    in  the 

'  Dr.  Harnack  thinks  that  the  position  assigned  to  the  "  relatives  of 
onr  Lord  "  in  the  choice  of  the  head  of  the  community  shows  that  tlie 
thought  of  Jesus  as  the  "  Teacher  "  had  given  place  to  the  conception  of 
"  king  "  ;  but  according  to  Oriental  usage  it  is  precisely  the  position  of  a 
religious  "  teacher "  which  is  transmitted  in  the  line  of  the  founders 
kinsfolk.     Compare  Expositor,  1887,  Jan. -June,  p.  326. 

^  1  and  2  Thessalonians  written  about  48-52  a.d.  ;  1  Corinthians  and 
Galatians  written  about  5.'?-.5o  a.d  ;  2  Corintliians  written  about  53-50 
A.D.  ;    Romans  written  about  54-57  a.d. 

3  Compare  above  pp.  60  fT. 


122    THE  CHURCHES   CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

strict  sense  of  the  words,  performed  services  necessary  for  the 
well  being  of  the  community  such  as  office-bearers  are  accus- 
tomed to  do. 

Even  in  the  case  of  the  simplest  and  smallest  Christian  com- 
munities certain  services  must  always  be  rendered  to  the  whole 
fellowship.  Some  one  must  provide  a  room  for  the  meetings, 
.  take  care  of  the  Scriptures  and  other  books  required  for  the  acts 
I  of  public  worship,  keep  the  records  of  the  society.  The  meetings 
,  need  a  president,  if  only  for  the  time  being.  There  is  also  need 
I  for  services  which  may  be  called  spiritual.  Some  one  must  see 
that  brotherly  intercourse  is  maintained,  that  quarrels  are 
[avoided,  and  that  persons  at  variance  are  reconciled.  The 
sick  have  to  be  visited,  inquirers  and  the  young  have  to  be 
instructed  and  encouraged  in  the  faith.  Some  persons  have 
to  see  to  all  these  things.  They  will  naturally  season  their  work 
with  advice,  admonition,  warning,  and  encouragement.  The 
men  who  begin  to  do  these  things  from  their  love  to  the  cause 
and  the  work  naturally  go  on  doing  them ;  and  their  activity 
which  was  at  first  purely  personal  and  voluntary,  tends  to  be- 
come recognized  and  official.  This  is  what  may  be  seen  on  any 
mission  field  in  the  present  day,  especially  in  such  lands  as 
China  and  India,  where  Christianity  is  doing  aggressive  work 
among  a  civilized  people  habituated  to  work  together  in  a 
society.  The  epistles  of  St.  Paul  reveal  the  same  state  of  things. 
The  men  who  are  to  be  honoured  as  leaders  are  those  who  work 
for  their  brethren  and  put  some  heart  into  their  labour  (o/  kotti- 
covre^  ev  vixlv).  Their  work  might  include  exhortation  and  ad- 
monition, for  the  term  applied  to  them  by  St.  Paul  is  the  word 
he  used  to  describe  his  own  labours,'  or  it  might  be  work  of  some 
other  kind.^  Whatever  it  was,  it  was  necessary  for  the  founda- 
tion, growth  and  stability  of  the  infant  churches.     The  men 

'  1  Cor.  XV'.  10  :  "I  laboured  (eVoTrtacra)  more  abundantly  than  they 
all."  Gal.  iv.  11  :  "  Lest  by  any  means  I  have  bestowed  labour  [KCKoiriaKa) 
upon  you  in  vain." 

-  Rom.  xvi.  6,  12  ;  inhere  providing  for  material  wants  seem  to  be  the 
meaning. 


PATRONS  AND  CLIENTS  123 

who  laboured  in  these  ways  were  the  natural  leaders  of  the  com- 
munity, for  leadership  was  to  be  based  on  service,  and  the 
apostle  declared  that  they  were  to  be  "  esteemed  highly  for  their 
works'  sake."  '  These  workers,  as  is  the  case  in  modern  missions, 
were  the  first  converts,  like  Stephanas,'  or  the  men  who  had 
given  their  houses  for  the  meetings  of  the  brethren.^  These 
brethren  were  to  have  the  pre-eminence,  and  were  to  be  obeyed 
for  their  works'  sake."^ 

These  natural  leaders  receive  a  special  name  in  the  epistles 
tojhe  Romans  and  to  the  Thessalonians.  They  are  called  "^ 
"  those  who  are  over  you  in  the  Lord."  The  word  is  irpoia-raixe- 
voi  ;  and  the  term  has  a  history,  and  would  at  all  events  suggest  a 
special  kind  of  relationship  between  leaders  and  led.  It  sug- 
gested the  relation  of  patron  and  client,  of  irpoa-rdT)}^  and  fxtroiKo?, 
familiar  enough  in  Rome  and  in  Thessalonica,  which  no  longer 
bore  the  old  strictly  legal  meaning,  but  which  in  a  less  definite 
sense  permeated  the  whole  social  life  of  the  times.  The  word 
or  a  cognate  one  (7rpoe<TT«?)  lingered  long  in  the  Roman  Church. 
It  is  found  in  the  writings  of  Hermas,  the  Roman  presbyter, 
and  was  used  by  Justin  Martyr  when  he  wished  to  explain  the 
organization  of  a  Christian  congregation  to  a  Roman  Emperor.^ 

1  1  Thess.  V.  13. 

2  1  Cor.  x\n.  15,  19,  cf.  Acts  xviii.  2,  26  ;  Clement,  1  Epistle,  xlii.  4. 

3  Rom.  xvi.  5,  10,  11,  14,  15  ;   1  Cor.  xvi.  19  ;  Col.  iv.  15  ;  Philem.  2. 

4  1  Cor.  xvi.  16. 

5  We  find  the  series  of  i-elated  words  : — 7r/Doco"Ta/x€VO?,  •jrpoi'crTd/xevoi 
(used  as  a  noun),  Trpoo-Tart?,  Trpoo-raTT/s  and  Trpoeo-rats,  Rom.  xii.  8  ; 
xvi.  2  ;  1  Thess.  v.  12  ;  Hermas,  Pastor,  Vis.  ii.  4  ;  Justin,  i.  Apol.  Ixv  ; 
Ixvii.  The  term  ■n-po(TT(xTr}<;  was  used  technically  in  Greek  city  life  (and 
Thessalonica  in  Paul's  time  was  a  Greek  city  which  had  been  permitted  by 
the  Romans  to  retain  its  ancient  Greek  constitution)  to  denote  those 
citizens  who  undertook  to  care  for  and  rule  over  the  /xerotKot,  or  persons 
who  had  no  civic  rights.  It  denoted  technically  the  Roman  relation  of 
patron  and  client  and  what  corresponded  thereto  in  Greek  social  life. 
The  word  was  used  by  Plutarch  to  translate  the  Latin  patronus  (Plu- 
tarch, Rom.  13  ;  Mar.  5).  Clement,  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians, 
applies  the  word  in  three  cUfferent  places  to  denote  our  Lord  :  "  the 
Patron  and  Helper  of  our  weakness "  (xxx\i.  1)  ;  the  Highpriest  and 
Patron  of  our  souls  "-  (Ixi.  3  ;   Ixiv.).     It  was  the  custom  that  the  Roman 


124    THE  CHURCHES  CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

Archaeological  investigation  has  proved  how  families  among 
the  privileged  Roman  aristocracy  were  the  patrons  of  their 
poorer  Christian  brethren.  The  "  church  in  the  house  "  was 
not  necessarily  a  "  kitchen  meeting."  The  investigations  of 
the  late  Commendatore  de  Rossi  have  shown  us  that  the  Chris- 
tian faith  made  its  way  at  a  very  early  period  into  the  families  of 
some  of  the  noblest  and  wealthiest  Romans.  They  could,  and 
probably  did,  open  their  houses  to  their  poorer  brethren  and  give 
their  great  audience  halls  (basilica)  for  the  worship  of  the  common 
brotherhood,  interposing  the  protection  of  the  legal  sacredness 
of  their  private  life  as  a  shield  on  all  who  joined  in  their  de- 
votions.^ Congregational  meetings  of  this  kind  had  the  appear- 
ance of  an  assembly  of  powerful  patrons  and  their  humble 
clients,  and  thus  took  the  form  of  a  well  recognized  condition 
of  Roman  social  life  in  all  its  ramifications.  This  idea  is  con- 
firmed by  the  shape  of  the  earliest  Roman  churches,  which,  as 
has  been  before  remarked,  resemble  the  audience  hall  of  the 
v/ealthy  Roman  burgher.  When  buildings  were  erected  for 
the  exclusive  use  of  the  Christian  worship  in  happier  days,  the 
architects  naturally  copied  the  arrangement  of  the  buildings 
they  had  been  used  to,  and  unconsciously  transmitted  archi- 
tectural proof  of  the  churchly  organization  of  earlier  times. 
Here,  for  a  third  time,  we  can  see  the  Christian  fellowship  organ- 
izing itself  under  social  usages  well  understood  by  the  members 
of  the  infant  brotherhood. 

confraternities,  especially  those  among  the  poorer  classes,  had  a  "  patron" 
or  "  patrons,"  who  were  frequently  ladies  of  rank  and  wealth  ;  compare 
Liebenam,  Zur  Geseh.  und  Organis.  d.  Rom.  Vereiiiswesens.  pp.  213,-18.  The 
Jewish  synagogues  in  Rome,  which  externally  resembled  the  pagan  con- 
fraternities for  religious  cults,  not  only  had  patrons  but  called  their  syna- 
gogues by  .their  names  ;  Schiirer,  Die  Gemeindevcrfassung  der  Jiiden  in 
Rom  in  der  Kaiserzeit,  p.  15  f.,31.  It  is  probable  that  Phoebe,  who  is 
called  by  St.  Paul  a  "  patroness  of  himself  and  of  many  "  (Rom.  xvi.  1-3), 
had  a  position  of  this  kind  at  Cenchrea,  and  that  this  v/as  the  service  she 
had  rendered. 

'  ■'  Nam  servis,  respubUca  et  quasi    civitas.    domus   est."    Plin.     Ep. 
viii.  16. 


THE   HEATHEN  CONFUATERNITIES  125 

In  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians,  while  we  find  exhortations 
to  obey,  we  do  not  find  any  words  which  designate  those  to 
whom  obedience  is  due  ;  nor  have  we  any  description  of  the 
organization  which  prevailed  in  the  Corinthian  Church,  nor  any 
advice  given  by  the  apostle  about  what  it  ought  to  be.  The 
Christians  of  Corinth  lived  amidst  so  many  forms  of  associated 
life  that  if  organization  was  to  be  worked  out  by  the  congre- 
gation for  itself,  they  would  naturally  have  more  aptitude  for 
it  than  most  Christian  communities.  For  the  people  of  Corinth 
were  accustomed  to  confraternities  of  all  kinds,  and  above  all 
to  private  religious  associations  for  the  practice  of  special  cults. 
Under  the  universal  state  religion  of  the  Roman  Empire  there 
were  innumerable  religions  with  their  different  forms  of  worship. 
The  state  religion  had  its  colleges  of  priesthoods,  its  great 
temples  and  its  public  sacrifices ;  these  private  religions  had 
their  associations  for  the  performance  of  their  pecidiar  rites. 
The  Jewish  synagogues  of  the  Dispersion  were  enrolled  as 
private  rehgious  societies,  and  seemed  to  their  heathen  neigh- 
bours to  be  one  kihd  out  of  many  institutions  for  the  practice 
of  a  religion  admitted  to  be  lawful  {religio  Ikita),  although  it 
was  the  faith  of  only  a  small  minority  of  their  neighbours. 

The  organization  of  these  confraternities,  as  far  as  the  western 
division  of  the  Empire  is  concerned,  is  knov/n  in  a  general  way ; 
and  although  it  differed  in  details  in  different  societies,  certain 
common  features  can  be  recognized.  The  confraternities 
were  thoroughly  democratic  to  the  extent  of  admitting  slaves 
to  be  members  provided  their  masters  gave  consent.  The 
confraternity  was  regarded  as  a  great  family,  and  the  associates 
called  each  other  "  brothers "  and  "  sisters."  They  had  a 
common  meal  at  stated  times.  They  paid  a  monthly  subscrip- 
tion to  the  common  fund  {stijts  menstrua).  They  were  per- 
mitted to  make  their  own  laws  provided  nothing  was  enacted 
which  came  into  collision  with  the  regulations  of  the  State. 
These  confraternities  elected  their  own  office-bearers,  who  were 
commonly  called  decuriones  ;  and  the  society  was  strictly  divided 


126    THE  CHURCHES   CREATING   THEIR  MINISTRY 

into  office-bearers  and  commons,  though  occasionally  we  find 
an  intermediate  class  of  honoured  persons.'  The  confraternities 
exercised  discipline  over  their  members  and  inflicted  fines  in 
money  and  in  kind  for  offences.  A  book  was  kept  {album) 
containing  the  names  of  all  the  associates.  Womeii-Were  mem- 
bers of  a  large  number  of  these  confraternities,  more  especially 
of  the  burial  clubs. ^  Their  places  of  meeting,  were  generally 
called  scJwlae,^  because  they  were  the  scenes  of  leisure  and  re- 
creation, though  the  words  curia  and  basilica  are  sometimes 
fomid  (the  Greek  word  is  almost  always  oIko?).  There  they 
had  their  common  meals  and  their  business  meetings ;  the  two 
were  never  held  together.  "  Item,"  says  a  decretum,  "  placuit 
si  quis  quid  queri  aut  referre  volet,  in  conventu  referat,  ut 
quieti  et  hilares  diebus  solemnis  epulemm-."  Almost  all  these 
confraternities  had  a  patron  or  a  patroness,  who  was  always 
elected  by  acclamation  and  never  by  a  mere  majority  of  votes. 
Sometimes  we  hear  of  confraternities  belonging  to  or  having 
their  seat  in  a  private  house,"*  consisting  probably  of  the  servants 
or  slaves  of  the  mansion.  Almost  all  these  confraternities,  like 
their  lineal  descendants  the  "  gilds  "  of  mediaeval  times,  whether 
in  England  or  on  the  Continent,  had  a  distinctly  religious  side 
even  when  they  were  not  formed  for  the  express  purpose  of 
practising  a  foreign  cult.  They  placed  themselves  under  the 
protection  of  some  deity  or  deities — merchants  honoured  Mer- 
cury ;  the  dealers  in  grain,  Ceres  and  the  Nymphs  ;  the  wine- 

^  This  finds  its  parallel  in  the  honoured  class  which  existed  in  the  Christ- 
ian congregations  of  the  early  centuries,  and  who  ranked  between  the 
clergy  and  the  people — the  confessors,  martyrs,  widows,  virgins. 

2  This  pecuharity  has  descended  to  modern  times ;  it  is  not  very  easy, 
those  who  have  tried  it  say,  to  induce  women  to  form  trades  unions,  but 
they  are  always  ready  to  become  members  of  burial  clubs. 

3  "  The  cti^oAt)  Tvpdvpov  "  (Acts  xix.  9)  was  probably  such  a  place — 
the  meeting  place  of  a  confraternity,  and  named  after  the  patron  of  the 
"  gild  "  according  to  a  usual  practice,  with  a  haU  Avhich  could  be  hired 
when  not  needed  for  the  meetings  of  the  society. 

'^  The  "  coUegium  quod  est  in  domu  Sergiae  Pauhnae  ""  corresponds  to 
"  the  church  which  is  in  the  house  of  Philemon."' 


THE  HEATHEN   CONFRATERNITIES  ,127 

dealers,  Liber ;  the  weavers  and  spinners,  Minerva ;  and  the 
fishermen,  Neptune,  etc.— and  paintings  of  the  protecting 
deity  and  images  of  the  emperors  adorned  the  walls  of  the 
Sclwla.^ 

A  large  nimiber  of  the  Christian  converts  must  have  belonged 
to  these  confraternities  before  their  conversion ;  many  main- 
tained their  places  as  members  after  their  entrance  into  the  Chris- 
tian Church  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  masterful  ecclesiastics, 
hke  Cyprian  of  Carthage  and  some  bishops  of  Rome,  to  prevent 
the  practice.^    They  must  have  known  how  the  associations  were 

^  For  the  confraternities  which  existed  in  the  Graeco-Roman  world, 
compare:  Foucart,  Des  Associations  lieligieuses  chez  les  Grccs  (1873); 
Liiders,  Die  dionysischen  Kilnstler  (1873)  ;  Ziebarth,  Das  Griechische 
Vereinswescn  (1895),  the  fullest  and  most  accurate  for  the  Greek  asso- 
ciations ;  Mommsen,  Dccollegiis  ctsodaliciis  (1843)  ;  Gerard,  De  corporations 
ouvrieres  d  Rome  (1884)  ;  Boissier,  La  religion  romaine  d'Auguste 
auxAntonins  (1878),  ii.  292  £f.  ;  Cohn,  Zum  romischen  Vereinsrecht  (1873)  ; 
Liebenam,  Ziir  Geschichte  und  Organisation  des  romischen  Vereinswesen  (1890), 
the  fullest  and  most  accurate. 

For  the  relation  of  these  confraternities  to  the  primitive  Cliristian 
organization,  compare:  Renan,  Les  ApStres  (1866),  p.  351  ff.  ;  Heinrici, 
Zeitschrift  filr  wissenschaftlichcn  Theologie  (1876),  pp.  465  ff.  ;  (1877)  pp. 
89  ff  ;  Theologischen  Studien  vnd  Kritiken  (1881),  pp.  556  ff.  ;  Weingarten, 
in  his  preface  to  Rothe's  Vorlesungen  iiber  Kirchengeschichte  (1876),  p.  xiv.; 
and  in  Sybel's  Historische  Zeitschrift,  vol  xlv.  (1881),  pp.  441  ff.  ;  Hatch, 
The  Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches  (1881),  p.  36  ff.  ;  Holtz- 
mann.  Die  Pastoralbriefe  (1880),  pp.  194-202;  Loening,  Die  Gemeinde- 
verfassung  des  Urchristenthums  (1889),  p.  8  ff.  ;  and  Geschichte  des 
deutsrlies  Kirchenrechts  (1878),  i.  pp.  195-210  ;  Liebenam,  as  above,  pp. 
264-274;  SchmiecM,  Encyclopcedia  ^j/j/ica  (1902),  pp.  3110-1;  Ziebarth, 
as  above,  pp.  126-132  ;  Reville,  Les  Origines  de  I'Episcopat  (1894),  pp. 
180-194. 

2  Cyprian's  Epistles,  Ixvii.  6:  "  MartiaHs  also,  besides  frequenting 
the  disgraceful  and  filthy  banquets  of  the  Gentiles  in  their  collegium,  and 
placing  his  sons  in  the  same  collegium,  after  the  manner  of  foreign  nations, 
among  profane  sepulchres,  and  burying  them  together  -vnth  strangers  .  .  . 
such  persons  attempt  to  claim  for  themselves  the  episcopate  in  vain;  since 
it  is  evident  that  men  of  that  kind  may  neither  rule  over  the  Clu-istian 
Church,  nor  ought  to  offer  sacrifices  to  God,  especially  since  Cornelius, 
our  colleague,  a  peaceable  and  righteous  piiest,  and  moreover  honoured 
by  the  condescension  of  the  Lord  with  martyrdom,  has  long  ago  decreed 
with  us,  and  with  all  the  bishops  appointed  throughout  all  the  world. 


128    THE  CHURCHES  CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

organized,  and  they  mustjiaye  carriecL  that  knowledge  with 
them  into  Christianity.  They  were  Hkely  to  make  use  of  that 
knowledge  in  the  interests  of  the  new  faith  to  which  they  had 
attached  themselves. 

This  line  of  argument  may  easily  be  pressed  too  far.  Scholars 
like  Renanj  Heinrici,  Hatch  and  Weingarten,  to  say  nothing  of 
Schmiedel/  have  pushed  the  relation  which  they  think  subsisted 
between  the  heathen  confraternities  and  the  organization  of  the 
primitive  Gentile  Christian  communities  much  further  than  the 
evidence  seems  to  warrant.  Nothing  that  they  have  brought 
forward  bears  out  the  idea  that  the  Christian  societies  were 
framed  on  the  model  of  these  pagan  confraternities.  On  the 
contrary,  all  the  evidence  laboriously  accumulated  to  establish 
the  similarity  between  the  Christian  organization  and  that  of 
the  pagan  confraternities,  has  not  produced  many  points  of 
resemblance  which  are  not  the  common  property  of  all  forms 
of  social  organization.^     The  primitive  Christian  communities 

that  men  of  this  sort  might  indeed  be  admitted  to  repentance,  but  were 
prohibited  from  the  ordination  of  the  clergy  and  from  the  priestly  honour.  "- 
Martialis  was  bishop  of  Astorga  or  of  Merida  in  Spain,  and  was  a  lihella- 
ticus. 

^  Encyclopcedia  Bihlica,  iii.  3110-3111.  Schmiedel  seems  to  exaggerate 
the  connexion  between  the  confraternities  and  the  Cliristian  societies  when 
he  refuses  to  see  any  connexion  between  the  latter  and  the  Jewish  com- 
munities and  their  synagogue  system. 

^  The  points  of  similarity  Avhich  Heinrici  has  endeavoured  to  establish 
between  the  Christian  community  at  Corinth  and  the  pagan  confraternities 
do  not  amount  to  more  than  this  ;  Hatch  has  certainly  overrated  the 
evidence  he  has  brought  forward  that  episcopi  were  finance  officials  in 
the  confraternities  ;  points  of  resemblance  found  in  the  records  of  Greek 
associations  for  religious  purposes  are  almost  entirely  taken  from  pre- 
Christian  times,  and  it  is  forgotten  that  under  the  imperial  rule  the  con- 
stitutions and  formations  of  confraternities  for  all  purposes  were  entirely 
altered  and  that  we  know  almost  nothing  about  these  confraternities  in 
the  eastern  provinces  of  the  Empire  during  the  first  century  and  a  half 
of  the  imperial  rule.  What  can  be  shown  is,  that  to  an  outsider  there 
was  an  external  resemblance  of  the  most  general  kind  between  the 
Christian  communities  and  the  confraternities  ;  and  this  can  be  proved 
only  in  a  general  way  :  Pliny  wrote  to  Trajan  that  he  had  meant  to  pro- 
ceed against  the  Christians  of  Bithynia  as  belonging  to  an  illicit  confrater- 


ORGANIZATION   OF  JEWISH   SYNAGOGUES        129 

organized  themselves  independently  in  virtue  of  the  new  moral 
and  social  life  that  was  implanted  within  them  ;  but  they  did 
not  disdain  to  take  any  hints  about  organization  which  would 
be  of  service  from  the  pagan  associations  to  which  they  had 
been  accustomed,   c 

Here  then  we  have,  not  a  fourth  type,  but  a  fourth  root 
of  early  Christian  organization. 

A  fifth  may  be  found  in  the  Jewish  synagogues  of  the  Dis- 
persion ;  for  many  of  the  converts  must  have  been  Jews,  or  Gentiles 
who  had  become  Jewish  proselytes.  The  communities  of  the 
Jewish  people  scattered  over  the  Roman  Empire  occupied  very 
different  positions  in  different  places.  In  Alexandria  and  in 
Gyrene  they  had  acquired  almost  complete  political  independ- 
ence, and  formed  one  large  and  separate  community  distinct 
from  the  surrounding  population.  In  Rome,  they  had  no  rights 
that  could  be  called  political,  and  were  divided  into  a  number 
of  separate  communities  apparently  quite  independent  the  one 
of  the  others. 

Everywhere  however  throughout  the  Roman  Empire,  thanks 
to  the  legislation  of  Julius  Caesar  and  Augustus,  the  Jews  had 
acquired  complete  legal  protection  for  their  religion.'  This 
had  been  held  to  include  the  right  to  administer  their  property 
within  their  own  communities  according  to  their  own  laws, 
and  to  have  a  limited  jurisdiction  over  their  own  members. 


nity  (Ep.  90  (97)) ;  TertuUian  in  his  Apology  plainly  pleads  for  the  recog- 
nition of  the  Cliristian  Churches  as  lawful  confraternities ;  Bishop 
Zephyrinus  succeeded  in  getting  the  Roman  church  recognized  as  a  burial 
club  in  the  end  of  the  second  century  ;  and  Lucian,  in  his  Peregrin  us 
Proteus,  describes  Peregrinus  while  a  Christian  in  words  which  would  be 
applicable  to  the  official  of  a  Greek  confraternity  for  reUgious  purposes 
{BLaaapxO'^)':  which  would  imply  that  he  looked  on  the  Christian  com- 
munity as  ^tucro?  or  an  association  for  the  promotion  of  a  private  cult. 
Compare  Liebenam,  Die  Geschichte  und  Organisation  des  romischen  Vereins- 
wesen,  pp.  264-74,  and  Ziebarth,  Gricchische  Vercinswesen,  pp.  120-32. 

'  Both  Julius  Caesar  and  his  nephew  and  successor  began  legislation 
against  the  confraternities  that  abounded  ;  but  the  Jewish  communities 
were  recognized  by  them  as  lawful  confraternities. 

CM.  9 


130    THE  CHURCHES   CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

Thus  even  where  they  had  the  fewest  political  rights  the  Jewish 
communities  were  always  recognized  as  lawful  associations 
permitted  to  practise  the  rites  of  a  religio  licita.  The  unit  of 
the  Jewish  organization  was  the  synagogue.  In  Alexandria 
the  syngagogues  seem  to  have  been  united  under  a  common 
council ;  but  in  Rome,  as  has  been  said,  the  synagogues  were 
independent  associations,  each  having  its  own  council,  its  own 
president,  and  its  own  office-bearers.^  The  privileges  of  ad- 
ministering their  own  property  and  of  exercising  jurisdiction 
over  their  own  members,  made  these  synagogues  as  much  civil  as 
religious  communities,  and  it  is  very  difficult,  if  not  impossible, 
to  distinguish  between  the  two  sides.  At  the  head  of  each  com- 
munity was  a  council,  the  yepovcrla,  with  a  president,  the 
yepovuidp-)^)]^  ;  the  official  leaders  of  the  community  were  called 
ap-)(ovTeg,  and  these  archons  were  commonly  elected  for  a  term 
of  years  and  sometimes  for  life.^  They  were  purely  civil  officials  ; 
they  decided  questions  of  property ;  they  had  some  criminal 
jurisdiction  ;  and  they  were  permitted  to  punish  disobedience. 
The  communities  had  also  almoners — at  least  three,  who  are 
commonly  classed  among  the  ecclesiastical  office-bearers,  but 
whose  work  was  almost  purely  civil.  The  only  purely  ecclesi- 
astical office  was  that  of  ap-)(^L(Tvi^ayco'yo?.  All  the  actions  of 
pubhc    worship,    reading    the    Scriptures,    preaching,    praying, 

^  These  synagogue  communities  were  sometimes  named  after  their 
patrons — the  "  synagogue  of  the  clients  of  Augustus,"  of  Agrippa,  of 
Volumnus  ;  sometimes  after  the  quarter  of  Rome  where  they  stood — the 
synagogue  of  Campus  Martius,  of  the  Subura,  etc.  ;  sometimes  after  the 
occupations  of  the  members — the  synagogue  of  the  burners  of  lime. 
Schiirer,  Geschicliie  des  jiidischen  Volkes  im  Zeitalter  Jesu  Christi  (3rd  ed. 
1898),  iii.  44-7. 

,  2  The  term  "  elder,"  which  one  expects,  is  not  found  in  inscriptions 
I  nor  in  laws  until  the  fourth  century  ;  archon  is  found  almost  universally. 
Schiirer  seems  to  think  that  the  members  of  the  gerusia  were  the  elders 
j  and  that  they  were  not  office-bearers,  but  the  honoured  heads  of  the  com- 
\  munity  by  whom  the  arclions  were  appointed.  If  so  this  would  be  a 
parallel  to  what  Harnack  believes  to  be  the  organization  of  the  early 
Christian  communities,  where  the  elderswere  not  office-bearers  but  honoured 
I  persons  from  whom  the  eyiscofi  were  chosen. 


ORGANIZATION  OF  JEWISH  SYNAGOGUES       131 

were  performed  by  the  private  members,  and  it  was  the  duty 
of  the  official  to  select  those  who  were  to  take  part  in  the  services. 
Some  synagogues  had  more  than  one  a  pyj.(Tvv  ay  coy  o<i,  and  in 
later  times  the  title  must  have  become  an  honorary  one,  for 
we  find  it  given  to  women  and  to  boys.  Besides  this  purely 
ecclesiastical  official  there  was  the  "  servant  of  the  synagogue  " 
{v7r}jp€T>]<i),  who  seems  to  have  combined  the  offices  of  school- 
master, beadle  and  public  executioner ;  he  taught  the  children, 
brought  in  and  removed  the  copies  of  Scripture  used  in  public 
worship,  and  corporal  punishment  for  misdeeds  was  admin- 
istered by  him.'^ 

However  the  internal  organization  of  these  Jewish  communities 
differed  from  the  pagan  confraternities,  their  external  appear- 
ance was  such  that  they  were  undoubtedly  classed  among 
them,  and  by  the  names  they  gave  their  officials  and  by  some 
of  their  customs  they  would  appear  to  have  tried  to  carry  out 
the  likeness  as  far  as  possible.^ 

This  synagogue  organization  has  some  points  in  common 
with  that  of  the  early  Christian  communities,  and  these  were 
probably  taken  over  into  Christianity,  but  the  differences  were 
so  great  that  it  is  impossible  to  say  that  the  one  organization 
comes  from  the  other.  Whether  we  regard  their  connexion 
with  the  pagan  confraternities  on  the  one  hand,  or  with  the 
Jewish  synagogues  on  the  other,  it  may  be  said  that  the  organiza- 

'  For  the  organization  of  the  Jewish  synagogue  system,  compare  Schiirer, 
Geschichte  des  jiUUschen  Volkes  im  Zeitalter  Jesu  Christi  (3rd  ed.  1898), 
ii.  pp.  427-463  (Eng.  Trans,  ii.  55-68,  243-270)  ;  also  his  Gemeindeverfas- 
sung  der  Juden  in  Rom  in  der  Kaiserzeit  (1879)  ;  Vitringa,  De  Synagoga 
vetere  (1696). 

2  Schiirer  notes  these  customs  among  others  :  the  Greek  communes 
were  accustomed  to  honour  witli  garlands  and  with  special  seats  at  the 
public  entertainments  their  public  benefactors,  the  leaders  of  the  sjma- 
gogues  voted  garlands  and  front  seats  in  the  synagogues  to  theirs  ;  slaves 
were  set  free  in  the  temples,  among  the  Jews  they  were  brought  to  the 
synagogues  ;  women  were  honoured  with  titles — presbytera,  mater  syna- 
gogue, archisynagugos.  As  for  the  names  of  office-bearers,  none  of  them  are 
exclusively  Jewish  ;  even  dp)(^Lcrvvdywyo<;  has  a  pagan  use  so  common  that 
it  is  impossible  to  say  that  it  is  of  strictly  Jewish  origin. 


132    THE  CHURCHES  CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

tion  of  the  Christian  communities  proceeded  by  a  path  peculiar 
to  themselves.  Starting  from  the  simplest  forms  of  combina- 
tion they  framed  their  ministry  to  serve  their  own  needs  in  accord- 
ance with  what  they  saw  was  best  fitted  for  their  own  peculiar 
work.^  This  did  not  mean  that  the  training  acquired  in  pagan 
confraternity  or  in  Jewish  synagogue  was  altogether  without 
effect  on  the  members  of  the  infant  Christian  churches,  or  that 
usages  suitable  for  their  purposes  were  not  adopted  ;  but  it 
does  mean  that  the  organization  of  the  primitive  Gentile  churches 
was  not  a  copy  either  of  pagan  confraternity  or  of  Jewish  syna- 
gogue. What  is  to  be  insisted  upon  is  that,  on  the  supposition 
that  the  apostles  did  not  prescribe  any  definite  form  of  Church 
government  (and  there  is  not  only  no  evidence  that  they  did, 
but  the  indications  are  all  the  other  way),  the  Christians  of 
Corinth  and  of  other  cities  in  the  East  and  in  the  West  were 
sufficiently  acquainted  with  forms  of  social  organization  to 
be  able  to  organise  their  communities  in  such  a  way  that  the 
possibilities  of  rule  and  service  which  lay  in  the  possession  of 
those  gifts  of  the  Spirit  that  manifested  the  presence  of  Christ, 
could  find  free  exercise  for  the  benefit  and  edification  of  the 
whole  community. 

;  One  thing,  however,  in  this  connexion  must  not  be  forgotten, 
as  it  often  is.  The  infant  Christian  churches  came  into  being 
in  the  Graeco-Roman  world  at  a  time  when  the  imperial  policy 
was  extremely  jealous  of  any  forms  of  social  organization,  and 
when  its  officials  were  on  the  watch  to  prevent  any  new  develop- 
ment of  the  principle.  Julius  Caesar,  on  political  grounds, 
had  suppressed  all  confraternities  except  those  of  ancient  origin,^ 
but,  also  from  motives  of  policy,  had  expressly  excepted  the 
Jewish    synagogues.^     His    nephew    and    successor    Augustus 

^  Schiirer,  Theologische  Literaturzeitimg  for  1879,  pp.  544-6. 

2  Suetonius,  Caesar,  42  :  Cuncta  collegia,  praeter  antiquitus  constituta, 
distraxit. 

3  Josephus,  Antiquitates,  XIV.  x.  8 :  "  Julius  Caius,  praetor  of  Rome, 
to  the  magistrates,  senate  and  people  of  the  Parians,  sendeth  greeting. 
The  Jews  of  Delo3,  and  some  other  Jews  that  sojourn  there,  in  the  pre- 


THE  CHURCHES  WERE  NEVER  COLLEGIA  LICITA  133 

followed  in  his  uncle's  footsteps,  and  in  addition  had  ordered 
all  religious  associations  to  be  placed  under  the  strictest  control 
and  surveillance.^  The  well-known  contempt  which  the  first 
emperor  entertained  for  Oriental  religions  was  doubtless  partly- 
responsible  for  this.^  The  Jewish  synagogues  were  again  specially 
exempted.  All  new  confraternities  had  to  get  a  special  permit 
from  the  senate,  if  they  were  in  the  senatorial  provinces,  and 
from  the  emperor,  if  they  belonged  to  the  imperial  ones.  The 
only  associations  which  were  perhaps  exempted  were  the  collegia 
tenuiorum,  when  they  were  also  burial  clubs  ;  but  it  is  doubtful 
whether  there  was  ever  a  general  concession  made  till  the  time 
of  Severus.  There  existed,  however,  throughout  the  empire 
a  multitude  of  confraternities  which  had  not  received  the  sanc- 
tion of  either  senate  or  emperor,  and  which  were  therefore 
illicit,  but  which  were  undisturbed  although  under  police  super- 
vision. They  could  be  suppressed  at  any  time,  and  it  was  pro- 
vided that  no  very  serious  punishment  accompanied  the  sup- 
pression.^    Christianity  was  never  recognized  as  a  religio  licita 

sence  of  your  ambassadors,  signified  to  us,  that,  by  a  decree  of  yours  you 
forbid  them  to  make  use  of  the  customs  of  their  forefathers  and  their 
way  of  sacred  worship.  Now  it  does  not  please  me  that  such  decrees 
sliould  be  made  against  our  friends  and  confederates,  whereby  they  are 
forbidden  to  live  according  to  their  own  customs,  or  to  bring  in  contribu- 
tions for  common  suppers  and  holy  festivals,  while  they  are  not  forbidden 
to  do  so  even  in  Rome  itself  ;  for  even  Caius  Caesar,  our  imperator  and 
consul,  in  that  decree  wherein  he  forbade  the  Bacchanal  rioters  to  meet 
in  the  cit}',  did  yet  permit  these  Jews,  and  these  only,  both  to  bring 
in  their  contributions,  and  to  make  their  common  suppers.  Accordingly 
when  I  forbid  other  Bacchanal  rioters  I  permit  these  Jews  to  gather  them- 
selves together,  according  to  the  customs  and  laws  of  their  forefathers, 
and  to  persist  therein.  It  will  therefore  be  good  for  you,  that  if  you 
have  made  any  decree  against  these  our  friends  and  confederates,  to 
abrogate  the  same,  by  reason  of  their  virtue  and  kind  disposition  towards 
us." 

^  Dio  Cassius,  Hi.  36  ;  Suetonius,  Augmtus,  32.        ^  Dio  Cassius,  Uv.  6. 

3  "  Collegia  si  qua  fuerint  illicita,  mandatis  et  constitutionibus  et 
senatusconsultis  dissolvuntur ;  sed  permittitur  eis,  cum  dissolvuntur, 
pecunias  communes  si  quas  habent  dividere  pecuniam  que  inter  se  partiri ; 
Dig.  XLVII.  xxii.  3. 


134    THE  CHURCHES   CREATING   THEIR  MINISTRY 

till  the  time  of  Constantine,  and  could  never  have  received  official 
sanction  for  its  assemblies  ;  but  it  was  not  impossible  for  the 
Christian  churches  to  take  the  place  of  an  illicit  confraternity 
provided  they  had  such  an  external  resemblance  to  some  well 
recognized  confraternities  as  would  permit  the  police  to  connive 
at  their  existence.  It  is  undoubted  that  the  Christian  Church 
!\' was  at  first  believed  by  the  Romans  to  belong  to  the  tolerated 
and  protected  Judaism.  Tertullian  meets  the  charge  that 
Christianity  was  "  hiding  something  of  its  presumption  under 
the  shadow  of  an  illustrious  religion  (Judaism),  one  which  has 
at  any  rate  the  authorization  of  law."  ^  So  long  as  the  Roman 
Government  did  not  perceive  the  difference  between  the  Chris- 
tians and  the  Jews,  the  infant  Christian  churches  could  remain 
sheltered  under  the  laws  which  permitted  legalized  confraterni- 
ties ;  ^  but  when  the  difference  became  manifest,  and  when  Jews 
themselves  began  to  denounce  the  Christians,  some  other  shelter 
was  required.^  This  could  be  and  no  doubt  was  furnished  by 
the  general  external  resemblance  of  the  Christian  societies  to 
the  pagan  confraternities  for  religious  practices.     Hence  con- 

'  Tertullian,  Apology,  21. 

^  De  Rossi,  Roma  Sottereana,  iii.  509  ;  BuUetino  di  Archaeologia  Cristiana 
(1865),  pp.  90-94  ;  Liebenam,  Zur  Geschichte  und  Organisation  des  romischen 
Vereinswesen,  268.  Holtzmann,  Die  Pastoralbriefe,  197.  The  protection 
was  not  restricted  to  those  who  were  Jews  by  birth  ;  it  extended  to  pro- 
selytes (o-€/3o/x€i/oi)  ;  cf.  BuUetino  di  Archaeologia  Cristiana  (1865),  p.  91.- 

3  Authorities  differ  about  the  date  when  the  Roman  officials  first  re- 
cognized the  difference.  Ramsay  {The  Church  in  the  Roman  Eyn-pire,  p. 
266  ft.)  differs  from  most  German  authorities  in  thinking  it  to  been  have 
much  earlier  tlian  the  time  of  Domitian  ;  I  agree  with  him  thoroughly. 
When  we  remember  the  wise  political  dread  of  religious  combinations 
which  the  emperors  from  Augustus  do\\^lward  showed  ;  their  discern- 
ment that  religion  was  the  most  powerful  pohtical  motive  power  in  the 
East ;  the  presence  in  every  province  of  men  trained  to  note  the  beginnings 
of  all  movements  which  might  disturb  the  state  ;  and  when  we  glance  at 
the  objective  picture  of  that  old  system  of  ruling  provinces  which  modern 
India  furnishes — none  but  an  arm-chair  critic  would  deny  it.  British 
officials  in  India  know  of  all  the  small  beginnings  of  rehgious  movements 
in  their  districts  long  before  the  public  know  anything  about  them,  if 
they  ever  acquire  the  knowledge. 


CHURCHES,   SYNAGOGUES,  CONFRATERNITIES     135 

formity  with  the  usages  of  a  pagan  confraternity  gave  the  Chris- 
tians the  best  means  of  escaping  the  attention  of  the  authorities, 
alert  to  notice  any  attempts  to  start  altogether  new  associations.' 
It  is  evident  that  the  Christian  communities  had  some  usages 
in  common  with  the  confraternities,  and  precisely  those  which 
would  be  the  most  likely  to  attract  attention.  They  met  to- 
gether for  a  common  meal  (which  was  one  of  the  things  that 
Pliny  noticed)  ;  ^  they  made  a  distinction  between  the  meetings 
for  the  common  meal  and  those  for  edification  and  for  busi- 
ness ;  they  honoured  the  dies  natalis  of  a  martyr  as  the  con- 
fraternities celebrated  the  birthdays  of  benefactors ;  they  ex- 
hibited a  reverence  for  their  dead  brethren  in  ways  that  could 
be  compared  with  the  practices  of  the  confraternities  ;  ^  above 
all,  after  the  time  of  the  Emperor  Nerva  they  tried  to  assimilate 
themselves  to  the  collegia  tenuiorum,  which  obtained  an  easier 
recognition  on  the  part  of  the  authorities,  and  this  came  to  a  head 
when  Bishop  Zephyrinus  was  able  to  get  the  Roman  Church 
registered  as  a  burial  club."*  There  was  sufficient  external 
resemblance  between  the  confraternities  to  enable  Tertullian 
to  plead  that  the  Chmch  should  be  recognized  as  a  legally  per- 
mitted association,  and  to  make  Pliny  suggest  that  he  might 
proceed  against  the  Christians  as  members  of  an  illicit  collegium.^ 
All  these  things  enable  us  to  see  how  the  Christian  churches 
during  the  earliest  part  of  their  existence  could  maintain  a 

^  Schmiedel,  Encydopcedia  Biblica,  3111;  Holtzmaiin,  Die  Pastoral- 
brief  e,  197  f.  Schmiedel,  however,  is  not  wairanted  in  making  the  de- 
ductions he  does  from  the  external  conformity  ;  there  mnst  have  been 
the  same  outward  conformity  between  the  Christian  communities  and 
the  Jewish  sjmagogues. 

2  Pliny,  Epist.  96  (97). 

3  For  the  burial  usages  of  the  confraternities,  compare  Liebenam,  Zur 
Geschichte  und  Organisation  des  romischen  V ereinswesens  (1890),  p.  254  ff.  ; 
Schultze,  Katacomhen  (1882),  pp.  9-14,  48-53  ;  De  Rossi,  Roma  Sottereana, 
iii.  501-507. 

4  This  is  commonly  inferred  from  the  fact  mentioned  by  Hippolytus, 
that  Zephyrinus  '"  appointed  him  (CaUxtus)  over  the  cemetery  "  ;  Re- 
futation {Philosophnmena),  ix.  7. 

5  Compare  above  p.  128,  n.  2. 


136    THE  CHURCHES  CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

position  of  precarious  security  in  face  of  the  imperial  policy 
of  not  permitting  new  associations.  But  we  are  scarcely  war- 
ranted in  drawing  conclusions  about  the  inward  organization 
of  the  primitive  Christian  communities.  What  we  can  infer 
is,  that  the  Christians  of  the  primitive  Gentile  churches  had  the 
ordinary  experience  to  enable  them  to  make  use  of  all  the  divine 
gifts  of  rule  and  service  in  creating  for  their  churches  from  their 
midst  a  ministering  service. 

Churches  like  that  of  Corinth  and  Philippi,  whatever  may  have 
suggested  their  forms  of  organization,  and  whatever  bands 
held  them  together,  had  within  them  persons  with  the  "  gifts  " 
which  enabled  them  to  offer  wise  counsels,  to  assist  their  neigh- 
bours, to  lead  the  devotions  and  to  manage  the  affairs  of  the 
community.  If  it  be  said,  as  it  is  sometimes  done,  that  the 
churches  of  Corinth  and  Rome  were  not  properly  organized 
because  we  do  not  hear  of  bishops  or  presbyters  or  deacons,  then 
that  means  that  a  Christian  community  could  be  addressed  as  a 
Christian  church,  could  be  called  "  Christ's  Body,"  could  admit 
catechumens  by  the  sacred  door  of  baptism,  could  assemble 
together  for  public  worship,  could  partake  together  of  the  Holy 
Supper,  could  exercise  Christian  discipUne,  and  all  this  without 
office-bearers  set  apart  for  the  purposes  of  the  ministry  in  regular 
and  ecclesiastical  fashion.  It  shows,  as  nothing  else  can,  that 
the  Church  comes  before  the  ministry,  and  that  it  creates  for 
itself  and  its  own  needs  its  ministering  service  ;  the  natural 
leaders  led,  the  people  followed,  the  organization  grew  and  the 
new  moral  and  social  life  had  full  liberty  to  develop  itself  in 
all  manner  of  Christian  service.  The  two  types  of  the  earliest 
local  ministry,  the  serving  and  the  leading,  the  aj/TiX>/\lret?  and 
the  Kvf'iepv/ja-ei'f,  the  ^lUKovdv  and  the  einirKOTrelv  appeared 
first  as  forms  of  doing  what  service  was  required  of  them,  and 
then  as  permanent  offices. 

Hitherto,  with  one  exception,  we  have  been  working  at  those 
portions  of  the  New  Testament  whose  dates  are  well  ascer- 
tained.    Our  material  has  been  drawn  chiefly  from  the  earlier 


DATES  OF  DOCUMENTS  137 

Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  all  of  which  belong  to  the  years  before 
57  A.D.  When  we  come  to  the  material  given  in  the  Epistle  of 
James,  1  Peter,  and  the  Pastoral  Epistles,  we  are  at  once  con- 
fronted with  questions  of  date  and  authorship,  on  which  modern 
scholars  hold  very  varying  opinions. 

For  our  purposes,  however,  these  questions  are  by  no  means 
so  important  as  might  at  first  be  supposed.  No  critic,  whose 
opinions  deserve  serious  consideration,  denies  the  truth  of  the 
pictures  of  the  ecclesiastical  organization  exhibited  in  the  Pas- 
toral Epistles  or  in  the  later  chapters  of  the  x4.cts  of  the  Apostles. 
While  they  may  refuse  to  admit  that  St.  Paul  or  St.  Luke  was  the 
author  and  while  they  may  relegate  the  composition  to  the  last 
decade  of  the  first  or  to  the  second  or  third  decades  of  the  second 
centmy,  they  all  admit  that  the  representations  of  ecclesiastical 
polity  found  in  these  documenta  are  true  for  this  later  period 
and  may  be  true  for  a  much  earlier  one.  The  Church,  it  is  held 
universally,  did  pass  through  the  stage  of  organization  shown 
in  these  documents.  The  only  question  is  the  date  of  the  stage. 
No  reasonable  critic  would  affirm  that  a  special  feature  of  ecclesi- 
astical organization  may  not  have  been  in  existence  long  before 
it  is  mentioned,  or  that  the  date  when  we  first  hear  about  it 
is  the  date  of  its  origin,  unless  there  is  the  express  statement 
that  it  took  its  beginning  at  that  time.  For  example,  when  it 
it  said  that  Paul  and  Barnabas  did  not  see  elders  set  over  the 
churches  of  Derbe,  Lystra  and  Iconium  (Acts  xiv.  23),  no  one 
denies  that  the  passage  is  evidence  for  the  existence  of  elders 
in  these  churches  in  the  beginning  of  the  second  centmy.  Only 
some  critics  believe  that  the  statement  so  conflicts  with  St. 
Paul's  own  account  of  his  conduct  towards  his  missionary 
churches  that  it  is  impossible  to  accept  the  idea  that  the  office 
of  eldership,  which  was  certainly  present  when  the  document 
was  written,  dates  as  far  back  as  the  planting  of  the  churches. 
They  say  that  the  writer,  not  unnaturally,  attributes  the  polity 
of  his  own  time  to  the  earlier  period.  Others,  who  accept  the 
late  date  of  the  document,  find  certain  corroborative  evidence 


138     THE   CHURCHES   CREATING   THEIR  MINISTRY 

of  the  existence  of  elders  in  these  churches  long  before  this  date, 
and  have  no  difficulty  in  believing  that  the  institution  of  the 
office  may  have  come  from  the  missionary  journey  of  St.  Paul, 
whatever  the  date  or  authorship  of  the  document  which  relates 
the  circumstance.  The  same  remark  applies  to  the  Pastoral 
Epistles.  If  the  late  date  of  the  documents  be  accepted,  and 
if  it  is  also  believed  that  the  accounts  of  the  organization  of  the 
churches  given  in  them  indicate  a  difference  of  polity  from  what 
appears  in  the  undisputed  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  the  result  is 
not  to  discredit  the  information  the  documents  give  us  about 
ecclesiastical  organization,  but  to  accept  it  as  evidence  for  what 
existed  in  the  first  and  second  decades  of  the  second  century. 
If  the  late  date  of  composition  be  maintained,  and  if  it  is  held 
that  the  information  given  is  not  inconsistent  with  what  existed 
in  earlier  days,  then  nothing  compels  us  to  conclude  that  the 
beginnings  of  the  polity  described  are  as  late  as  the  accepted 
date  of  the  documents  describing  them.  In  either  case  the 
documents  are  held  to  describe  truly  the  condition  of  the  ministry 
of  the  Church  at  an  earlier  or  at  a  later  period — the  question 
of  time  being  settled  not  by  the  date  of  the  document  but  by 
a  comparison  between  the  information  it  gives  with  what  we 
know  of  the  earlier  period.  The  matter  involved  does  not  con- 
cern a  general  conception  of  ecclesiastical  organization,  but 
whether  a  certain  stage  of  development,  which  did  exist  some- 
time, was  of  an  earlier  or  of  a  later  appearance — a  question  which, 
when  we  consider  the  utmost  limits  of  time  involved,  is  com- 
paratively unimportant. 

We  need  not,  therefore,  concern  ourselves  here  with  the 
problems  which  the  date  and  authorship  of  the  Book  of  Acts 
and  of  1  Peter  suggest.'     But  prevailing  critical  opinions  about 

'  Personally  I  am  not  disposed  to  brush  aside  the  difficulties  which  the 
Book  of  Acts  presents  ;  they  relate  chiefly  to  the  limited  time  which  the 
Eusebian  chronology  (and  it  appears  to  me  to  be  the  most  trustworthy) 
allows  for  the  events  recorded  down  to  the  conversion  of  St.  Paul ;  but 
difficulties  seem  to  me  to  be  increased  and  not  lessened  by  any  proposed 
reconstruction.     So  far  as  our  subject  of  investigation  is  concerned  all 


THE  PASTORAL   EPISTLES  139 

the  Pastoral  Epistles  place  the  portions  which  concern  our 
subject  so  very  late  that  it  is  necessary  either  to  dissent  from 
them  or  to  relegate  the  information  these  documents  give  to 
the  period  which  produced  the  Epistles  of  Ignatius  and  the 
Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Ca)io)is.^     These  Pastoral  Epistles  were 

"  critics  "  recognize  the  election  of  the  "  Seven  "  as  an  historical  fact ; 
and  the  only  remaining  question  of  organization  is  the  statement  that 
"  elders  "  were  appointed  (not  "  ordained,"  for  that  is  not  the  word)  in 
the  churches  of  the  Galatian  mission  by  Paul  and  Barnabas  ;  and  this 
it  seems  to  me  is  rendered  highly  probable  by  evidence  which  is  altogether 
independent  of  the  date  and  authorship  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  As 
to  the  date  of  the  book,  I  follow  Professor  Sanday  who  believes  the  book 
to  have  been  written  about  80  a  j).  and  that  its  author  was  St.  Luke.  Dr. 
Harnackon  the  other  hand  declares  that  the  date  of  the  book  is  some  time 
between  79  and  93  a.d.  Geschichte  der  altchristliche  Literatur  bis  Euse- 
bius,  II.  ;  Chronologie,  i.  246-50. 

^  The  "  critical  view  "  of  the  date  of  the  Pastoral  Epistles  may  perhaps 
be  best  taken  from  the  short  summary  in  Harnack's  Geschichte  der  altchrist- 
liche Literatur  bis  Eusebius,  II.,  Chronologie,  i.  480-5,  supplemented  from 
Holtzmann,  Die  Pastoralbriefe  (1880).  It  is  as  follows : —The  three 
Epistles,  1  and  2  Timothy  and  Titus,  go  together  and  are  to  be  treated 
as  a  whole  ;  the  same  arguments  and  the  same  results  apply  to  all.  These 
epistles  contain  some  genuine  sayings  of  St.  Paul — a  few  verses  in  2 
Timothy  scarcely  a  thu'd  of  Titus,  but  not  a  verse  of  1  Timothy 
—enough  to  say  that  the  writings  are  founded  on  genuine  apostolic  letters. 
But  in  the  state  in  which  they  have  come  to  us  they  represent  an  entirely 
different  authorship.  The  reasons  given  for  this  judgment  may  be  classed 
under  three  heads  :  the  language  is  different  from  St.  Paul's,  and  in  par- 
ticular the  epistles  contain  a  very  large  number  of  words  and  phrases 
quite  unlike  what  St.  Paul  uses  in  his  authentic  works  ;  warnings  are 
given  against  erroneous  beliefs  and  especially  against  Gnostic  opinions 
which  were  not  in  existence  before  the  death  of  St.  Paul ;  the  description 
of  the  ecclesiastical  organization  is  entirely  different  from  what  we  find 
in  the  authentic  letters  of  St.  Paul.  When  it  is  sought  to  determine  the 
date  of  the  epistles  two  definite  points  of  time  present  themselves.  Poly- 
carp  distinctly  quotes  2  Timothy  ii.  12  ;  and  the  redaction  cannot  be 
later  than  110  a.d.  On  the  other  hand  the  kinds  of  errors  which  the 
author  denounces  and  warns  against  had  no  existence  until  the  close  of 
the  first  century.  Hence  the  probable  date  of  the  letters  must  be  some- 
time between  90-110  a.d.  But,  it  is  said,  portions  must  be  much  later; 
the  closing  verses,  17-21,  of  1  Tim.  \n.  were  evidently  added  after  the  real 
end  of  the  epistle  at  verse  16.  Of  these  verses  17-19  contain  warnings 
which  find  a  parallel  in  the  admonitions  of  the  Pastor  of  Hermas  and 
belong  to  a  period  later  than  100  a.d.  ;   while  verses  20-21  have  no  con- 


140    THE  CHURCHES  CHEATING   THEIR  MINISTRY 

extensively  used  in  the  Primitive  Church  as  a  document  giving 
directions  about  ecclesiastical  organization  and  discipline. 
The  Mm'atorian  Fragment  tells  us  this.'  Like  all  documents 
used  in  this  way,  they  were  apt  to  be  interpolated  to  suit  the 
needs  of  time  and  place.     Statements  about  prevailing  errors 

ncxion  wth  the  rest  of  the  epistle,  are  directed  against  the  "  antitheses  " 
of  Marcion  and  cannot  be  earUer  than  130  a.d.  Similarly  verses  1-13  in 
I  Tim.  iii.  and  verses  17-20  in  1  Tim.  v.  17-20,  and  verses  7-9  in  Titus  i., 
have  httle  connexion  with  the  context  and  are  portions  of  an  ancient  book 
of  discipline.  They  present  striking  parallels  to  the  Sources  of  the  Apos- 
tolic Canons  and  cannot  be  much  earlier  than  130  a.d.  This  is  what 
"  criticism  "  makes  of  the  Pastoral  Epistles.  It  places  those  portions 
which  concern  our  subject  as  late  at  130  a.d.  and  forbids  us  to  use  them 
to  describe  the  organization  of  the  Churches  witlnn  the  first  century.  The 
reasons  given  are  briefly  these :  a  quotation  from  St.  Luke's  gospel  is 
called  a  scripture  and  that  of  itself,  it  is  said,  is  sufficient  to  show  the  late 
date  of  the  document ;  Timothy  is  represented  as  the  president  of  a  col- 
lege of  elders  and  in  this  capacity  is  the  judge  and  administrator  of  justice 
— functions  which  are  much  later  than  even  100  a.d. 

A  few  remarks  may  be  admitted  in  the  Avay  of  briefly  indicating  why  1 
refuse  to  accept  the  "  critical "  theories  about  these  epistles.  While  I 
gratefully  aclmowledge  Dr.  Harnack  as  the  greatest  living  authority  on 
early  Church  history,  I  never  read  what  he  has  to  say  about  the  two 
subjects  of  Gnosticism  and  ecclesiastical  organization  Avithout  longing  that 
he  could  spend  a  few  months  in  the  mission  field  where  aggressive  work 
is  being  done  a^mong  educated  pagans  whose  minds  are  full  of  the  same 
curious  oriental  faiths  and  their  aAlied  philosophies  as  were  present  to  the 
earliest  Christian  converts  in  the  first  and  second  centuries.  I  am  con- 
vinced that  if  this  experience  were  his  he  would  modify  much  that  he  has 
said  both  about  Gnosticism  and  about  ecclesiastical  organization.  The 
Oriental  mind,  tenacious  of  its  own  bcUefs  and  at  the  same  time  curiously 
receptive  in  I'eligious  conceptions,  strives  front  the  first  to  weave  Christian 
thoughts  into  its  sj'stem  of  Oriental  beliefs  and  is  surprised  that  the  amal- 
gam thus  produced  is  not  accepted  as  Christian  doctrine  by  the  missionary. 
The  very  errors  denounced  by  the  Pastoral  Epistles  may  be  found  among 
Hindu  inquirers  who  never  get  further  than  inquiry  and  a  certain  measured 
sympathy  with  Christian  teaching.  They  are  the  beginnings  of  Gnosticism 
apparent  to  the  missionary  long  before  they  have  acquired  the  definite 
shape  of  such  a  system  as  the  Arya  Soma],  to  take  one  of  the  forms  which 

^  "  Ad  Filemon  una,  et  ad  Titum  una,  et  ad  Timotheum  duas,  pro 
effecto  et  dilectione  in  honore  lamen  ecclesiae  catholice  in  ordinatione 
ecclesiastice  sanctificatae  sunt."- 


THE  PASTORAL  EPISTLES  141 

to  be  shunned  were  liable  to  be  altered  in  order  to  be  more 
sharply  descriptive  of  existing  heresies  or  tendencies  to  heresy 
and  disciplinary  directions  might  easily  have  taken  a  more 
technical  language  to  suit  a  later  period.  But  when  due  allow- 
ance is  made  for  these  natural  eifects  of  the  primitive  use  of 
these  documents,  there  docs  not  seem  to  be  evidence  strong 

modern  Indian  gnosticism  has  assumed.     If  the  Uving  picture  were  studied 
fresh  insight  would  be  acquired  about  ancient  documents.     It  would  be 
seen  for  example,  that  if  Timothy  or  Titus  were  acting  as  deputy  for  an 
apostle  or  missionary  it  does  not  follow  that  he  must  be  president  of  a 
college  of  elders  in  order  to  be  obliged  to  listen  to  accusations  against 
"  elders  "  nor  to  act  as  the  one  who  rebukes  in  public  and  in  private. 
The  more  I  study  these  pastoral  epistles  the  more  evident  it  becomes  to 
me  that  they  are  just  what  every  experienced  missionary  has  to  impart 
to  a  younger  and  less  experienced  colleague  when  he  warns  him  about 
the  difficulties  that  he  must  face  and  the  tasks,  often  unexpected,  he  will 
find  confronting  him.  It  is  scarcely  to  be  wondered  at  then  that  the  Pastoral 
Epistles  are  always  among  the  earliest  portions  of  the  scriptures  translated 
in  almost  every  Cliristian  mission.     A  study  of  the  living  picture  A\'ould 
also  teach  students  that  while  the  declaration  of  Epiphanius  may  be  ac- 
cepted that  gnosticism  did  not  trouble  the  Church  till  about  the  time  of 
Trajan  (which  is  the  deduction  usually  drawn  from  his    statements  given 
in  Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecdes.  III.  xxxii.  7)  that  need  not  prevent  our  believing 
that  incipient  gnosticism  had  to  be  guarded  against  from  the  very  beginning. 
At  the  same  time  it  is  very  probable  that  the  Pastoral  Epistles  contain 
many  interpolations  in  which  statements  about  errors  and  even  directions 
about  discipline  have  been  somewhat  altered  to  suit  the  requirements  of 
the  middle  of  the  second  century.     That  is  what  would  naturally  happen 
to  a  document  which  was  used,  as  we  know  these  epistles  were  used,  for  a 
manual  of  ecclesiastical  procedure  (the  Muratorian  Fragment  tells  us  that). 
The  insertion  of  "  scripture  "  {ypa<fiy)  might  easily  have  come  in  in  this 
way.     But  all  this  does  not  prevent  me  accepting  these  epistles  as  the  work 
of  St.  Paul  or  of  a  companion  who  wrote  for  him.     It  may  be  said  that  the 
supposition  that  these  letters  come  from  St.  Paul  requires  us  to  believe 
that  the  apostle  was  released  from  his  fii-st  captivity,  and  made  mis-sionary 
journeys  of  which  no  record  has  remained;  but  this  is  rendered  more  than 
likely  by  the  statement  of  Clement  (I.  v.  7)  that  St.    Paul    visited  the 
furthest  parts  of  the  West  (to  rep/xa  Trj<;  St'orew?)— an  expression  which, 
notwithstanding  all  that  has  been  said  against  the  idea,    seems    more 
naturally  applicable  to  Spain  than  to  Rome.     As  for  the  language — "  Tons 
ceux  qui  ont  I'experience  de  la  parole  en  publique  ne  savent-ils  pas  que 
le  ton  n'est  plus  le  meme  quand  on  parle  a  une  assemblee  que  lorsqu'on 
s'addresse  a  une  personne  en  particulier  '-'  (Reville,  Les  Origines  de  VEpis- 
copat  (189-i),  p.  497. 


142    THE   CHURCHES   CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

enough  to  warrant  our  refusing  to  believe  that  they  are  what  they 
declare  themselves  to  be — letters  from  St.  Paul  to  two  of  his 
most  trusted  fellow-workers,  instructing  them  how  to  carry  on 
his  missionary  work,  which  he  was  not  able  to  superintend 
personally.  If  this  be  the  case  these  letters  show  us  what  St. 
Paul  was  in  the  habit  of  doing  in  the  mission  fields  which  be- 
longed peculiarly  to  himself.  Titus '  had  accompanied  the 
apostle,  released  from  his  Roman  captivity,  to  Crete,  and  had 
been  left  there  to  complete  the  work  which  the  apostle,  pressed 
for  time,  could  not  stay  to  finish.  His  duty  was  to  see  that 
"  elders  "  were  chosen  in  every  local  church.  The  charge  re- 
calls the  account  given  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  of  the  mission- 
ary journey  of  Paul  and  Barnabas  through  the  district  which 
included  the  cities  of  Derbe,  Lystra  and  Iconium.  On  that 
missionary  tour  the  apostles  did  not  see  to  the  appointment 
of  "  elders  "  when  their  converts  were  first  gathered  from  Judaism 
and  heathenism.  They  allowed  the  believers  in  the  new  faith 
some  little  time  to  prove  themselves.  It  was  on  their  return 
journey,  when  they  were  "  confirming "  their  converts,  that 
the  dders  were  appointed.  So  here  Titus  was  left  till  the  sufii- 
cient  time  had  elapsed,  and  then  he  was  to  see  to  the  selection 
of  elders  in  the  local  churches  of  Crete.  His  work  was  one  that 
could  be  finished  within  a  comparatively  short  time,  for  the 
apostle  expected  him  to  follow  to  Nicopolis,  where  St.  Paul 
was  to  pass  the  winter.  There  is  no  suggestion  that  his  function 
was  anything  like  a  permanent  office  in  the  Church.  The  work 
given  him  to  do  is  perfectly  familiar  to  modern  missionaries. 

^  Titus  had  been  one  of  the  earUest  gentile  converts  from  heathenism 
— a  convert  or  spiritual  son  of  St.  Paul  himself  (Titus  i.  4).  The  apostle 
had  esteemed  him  so  highly  that  he  had  taken  him  up  to  Jerusalem 
when  he  went  there  to  plead  the  cause  of  gentile  liberty.  Titus  went 
with  St.  Paul  to  be  shown  as  a  specimen  of  what  these  gentile  converts 
of  his  were  like  (Gal.  ii.  3)  ;  and  he  had  passed  the  test  so  well  that  the 
leaders  of  the  Church  at  Jerusalem  had  not  required  that  he  should  be 
circumcised.  He  had  been  employed  by  St.  Paul  on  work  involving  tact 
and  confidential  discretion  (2  Cor.  xii.  18),  and  had  acquitted  himself  well. 


OFFICE-BEARERS   IN  THE   PASTORAL   EPISTLES    143 

The  other  deputy  was  Timothy.'  He  had  come  with  the  apostle 
to  Ephesus,  and  circumstances,  we  know  not  what,  had  required 
that  one  of  the  two  should  remain  and  "  confirm  "  the  Church 
there.  St.  Paul  had  other  work  to  do  ;  Timothy  was  selected 
to  remain,  and  he  received  two  letters  advising  him  how  to  act. 
Such  is  the  setting  of  these  Pastoral  Epistles  as  related  in  the 
writings  themselves. 

In  these  letters  to  Titus  and  to  Timothy  we  find,  as  we  might 
expect  in  such  documents,  much  more  detailed  references  to 
the  organization  of  the  churches  than  in  the  Epistles  addressed 
to  the  churches  themselves.  We  find  unmistakably  an  official 
ministry  which  appears  to  consist  of  two  grades.     We  see  evi- 

'  Timothy  was  the  favourite  fellow-worker  with  the  great  apostle. 
When  we  piece  together  his  story  from  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  and  from 
St.  Paul's  epistles,  we  find  something  like  the  following.  When  St.  Paul 
left  Antioch  with  Silas  on  his  second  visit  to  the  Galatian  Clmrches,  feel- 
ing sadly,  no  doubt,  that  Barnabas  was  no  longer  with  him,  either  he 
or  his  companion  had  an  assurance  given  in  "  prophecy  "  that  St.  Paul 
would  find  in  a  brief  time  a  helper  who  would  be  to  him  as  another  Barnabas 
(1  Tim.  i.  18  ;  iv.  14).  Wlien  St.  Paul  reached  Lystra  he  suddenly  recog- 
nized in  a  young  man  there  the  fellow-worker  who  had  been  divinely 
promised  to  him.  "  And  behold,"  says  Luke,  "  a  certain  disciple  was 
there,  named  Timothy,  the  son  of  a  Jewess  who  believed  ;  but  his  father 
was  a  Greek.  Him  Paul  icould  have  to  go  forth  with  him."  The  apostle 
received  him  with  the  kindly  Jewish  benediction,  laying  his  hands  on  his 
head  (2  Tim.  i.  6)  ;  and  the  elders  of  the  Church  also  gave  the  young  man 
their  benediction  before  he  set  out  on  his  new  life-work  (Acts  xvi.  1-4  ; 
1  Tim.  iv.  14).  There  is  a  striking  parallel  between  the  "  call  "  of  Timothy 
and  the  earlier  "  call "  of  the  great  apostle  himself—the  vision  of  Ananias 
and  the  prophetic  intuition  of  St.  Paul ;  Ananias'  benediction,  when  he 
laid  his  hands  on  the  future  head  of  the  Apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  and  the 
benediction  of  Timothy  bj^  St.  Paul ;  the  blessing  of  Saul  and  Barnabas 
by  the  "  prophets  and  teachers  "  at  the  head  of  the  Church  at  Antioch, 
when  they  started  on  their  first  mission  tour,  and  the  blessing  of  the 
elders  of  Lystra  when  Timothy  started  on  his  life  work  as  an  apostle  or 
evangelist.  From  this  time  he  and  St.  Paul  were  almost  always  together  ; 
they  were  like  father  and  son.  Timothy's  name  occurs  frequently  in 
the  epistles  of  St.  Paul.  When  difficult  c^uestions  arose  in  St.  Paul's 
mission  Cliurches  whish  needed  delicate  handling  and  when  the  Apostle 
could  not  go  himself  to  settle  them  Timothy  was  his  favourite  deputy 
(1  Cor.  xvi.  10  ;  1  Thess.  iii.  2).  The  apostle  saw  himself  hving  his  Ufe 
over  again  in  the  person  of  his  son  Timothy. 


144    THE  CHURCHES  CREATING   THEIR  MINISTRY 

dence^of  ajcongregational  roll  on  which  the  names  of  the  poor, 
who  are  to  receive  the  support  of  the  congregation,  are  entered. 
There  are  also  traces  of  a  ministry  of  women.  We  find  the 
apostle  laying  down  rules  to  guide  his  deputies  in  the  selection 
of  office-bearers  and  in  the  removal  of  ecclesiastical  excom- 
munication. In  short,  we  find  a  great  deal  more  definite  in- 
formation about  the  organization  and  the  ministry  of  the  primitive 
churches  than  in  any  other  of  the  New  Testament  writings. 

If  we  believe  that  the  apostle  was  above  all  things  a  missionary, 
and  that  his  deputies  were  to  do  the  work  of  missionaries,  which 
seems  to  be  the  only  view  which  is  consistent  with  the  nature 
of  the  function  and  the  description  of  their  work  v/hich  is  given 
in  the  New  Testament  writings,  these  Pastoral  Epistles  may  be 
expected  to  show  us  the  organization  of  the  primitive  Gentile 
churches  from  the  inside,  while  in  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  written 
either  before  or  during  the  Roman  captivity,  we  see  the  same 
organization  from  the  outside.  They  tell  us  how  the  apostle 
personally  superintended  the  building  into  churches  of  the 
communities  of  believers  his  preaching  had  gathered  together. 

/  The  two  sets  of  letters  are  complementary.  In  the  earlier 
letters  we  see  the  apostle  encouraging  every  form  of  spontaneous 
action,  and  haw  he  made  the  infant  communities  feel  that  the 
whole  responsibility  lay  upon  their  shoulders.  In  the  later 
epistles  the  master-builder  shovvrs  his  deputies  how  carefully 
he  was  accustomed  to  guide  the  exercise  of  that  responsibility 
with  scarcely  felt  touches  of  the  hand. 

/  The  duties  of  the  two  deputies  varied  with  the  wants  of  the 
places  in  which  they  were  set.     Timothy  had  to  do  with  an  older 

J    community  whose  special  circumstances  demanded  special  care  ; 

\  Titus  had  to  deal  with  comparatively  newly-established  congre- 
gations, and  to  guide  them  carefully  but  unobtrusively  to  organize 

^  themselves./  Both  had  to  do  the  work  which  the  apostle  was 
himself  accustomed  to  do  in  similar  circumstances.  It  was  the 
most  difficult  and  dehcate  work  that  falls  to  the  lot  of  a  mission- 
ary— to  guide  into  right  channels  of  self-government  communities 


OFFICE-BEARERS  IN  THE   PASTORAL  EPISTLES  145 

comparatively  young  in  the  faith,  and  to  do  it  in  such  a  way 
that  the  community  may  feel  that  it  is  doing  the  work  itself, 
and  will  be  able  to  sustain  itself  when  the  guiding  hand  shall 
be  removed.  In  modern  times  nothing  tests  the  abiUty  of  a 
missionary  for  his  work  like  this  very  task. 

The  apostle  gave  both  Titus  and  Timothy  a  master-thought 
to  guide  them.  The  infant  Christian  communities  were  to  be 
looked  on  as  Households  of  God,  and  as  every  great  household 
needs  servants  who  superintend,  so  the  Household  of  God  needs 
men  who  have  the  oversight.  He  that  has  proved  faithful  in 
small  things  is  the  most  likely  to  prove  faithful  in  all-important 
work,  and  the  man  who  has  sho\vn  that  he  can  guide  and  rule 
his  own  household  well  is  declared  to  be  the  best  fitted  to  super- 
intend the  Household  of  God.  Hence  we  are  told  very  Uttle 
about  the  special  duties  of  the  'presbyters  or  bishops,  or  what- 
ever their  usual  name  was,  and  find  Uttle  mention  of  qualities 
fitted  for  special  functions.  What  the  apostle  insists  on  is 
character,  and  that  kind  of  character  which  is  shown  in  family 
relationships. 

Titus  is  told  that  a  presbyter  or  elder  must  be  a  man  who  is 
above  suspicion,  who  is  a  faithful  husband '  and  whose  children 
are  Christians  of  well  regulated  lives.  He  is  not  to  be  self- 
AviUed,  nor  soon  angry,  nor  given  to  wine,  nor  turbulent,  nor 
given  to  money  ;  he  is  to  be  a  lover  of  strangers,  a  lover  of  what 
is  good,  sober-minded,  upright,  pious  and  temperate  in  all  things. 
Besides,  he  ought  to  be  so  well-grounded  in  the  principles  of 
Christian  morality  and  religion  that  he  can  exhort  the  brethren 
and  answer  the  common  Jewish  and  heathen  objections  to  the 
Christian  faith. 

Timothy  was  placed  in  temporary  charge  in  a  district  where 
the  Christian  community  had  existed  for  a  longer  period ;  and 
the  differences  in  the  advice  given  all  gather  round  this  fact. 

'  'A  faithful  husband"  appears  to  be  the  best  traaslatiou  of  utas 
yvi/aiKos  avSija — one  who  acta  on  the  prmciples  of  Christian  moiahty 
and  is  not  led  astray  by  the  licentious  usages  of  the  surrounding  heathenism. 

CM.  10 


146    THE  CHURCHES  CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

The  office-bearers  selected  by  the  community  were  not  to  be 
taken  from  the  most  recently  converted,  but  from  men  who  had 
some  experience  of  Christianity,  and  whose  character  had  stood 
the  test  of  time.^  The  office  of  "  oversight  "  had  become  sought 
after,  and  there  was  the  more  need  for  careful  selection.^  But 
as  in  the  letter  to  Titus  what  St.  Paul  insists  on  is  character, 
as  that  has  displayed  itself  within  the  family,  for  rule  in  the 
human  household  is  the  best  training  for  management  within 
the  Household  of  God.^  The  list  of  qualifications  is  practically 
the  same  as  was  given  to  Titus,  with  this  added,  that  he  who  has 
the  oversight  ought  to  be  a  man  respected  by  the  heathen  *  as 
well  as  by  his  fellow  Christians.^ 

I  1  Tim.  iii.  10 ;   2  Tim.  ii.  2.  ^  j  Yi\q..  iii.  1. 

3  1  Tim.  iii.  5.  4  l  Tim.  iii.  7. 

5  Harnack,  who  thinks  that  the  verses  in  1  Tim.  which  relate  to  the 
organization  of  the  Church  are  an  interpolation  and  represent  an  old  book 
of  the  Giurch  Order  not  unlike  the  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  CanoHS  and  per- 
haps derived  with  these  fragments  from  a  common  source,  points  out  a 
number  of  interesting  coincidences : — "  Let  a  woman  learn  in  quietness 
with  all  subjection."  (1  Tim.  ii.  11) :  "  in  order  that  it  (the  congregation) 
may  be  at  rest  without  disturbance,  after  it  has  been  first  proved  in  all  sub- 
jection "  {Aposf.  Can.  ii)  ;  "I  permit  not  a  woman  to  teach"  (1  Tim. 
ii.  12) :  compare  with  the  whole  of  Apost.  Can.  viii.,  especially  "  How 
then  can  we,  concerning  women,  order  them  services  "  ;  "  The  bishop 
must  therefore  be  without  reproach,  the  husband  of  one  wife,  temperate, 
sober-minded,  orderly,  given  to  hospitality,  apt  to  teach,  no  brawler  nor 
striker,  but  gentle,  not  contentious,  no  lover  of  money  ....  moreover 
he  must  have  good  testimony  from  them  that  are  without"  (1  Tim.  iii. 
2-7)  ;  "  If  he  (the  bishop)  has  a  good  report  among  the  heathen,  if  he  is 
without  reproach,  if  a  friend  of  the  poor,  if  sober-minded,  no  drunkard, 
nor  adulterer,  not  covetous  nor  a  slanderer  ...  it  is  good  if  he  is  un- 
married ;  if  not,  then  the  husband  of  one  wife ;  educated  ...  if  un- 
learned, gentle  "  {Apost.  Can.  i.) ;  "  Deacons,  in  like  manner,  must  be 
grave,  not  double  tongued,  not  given  to  much  wine  .  .  .  and  let  these 
also  be  first  proved,  then  let  them  serve  as  deacons  ...  let  the  deacons 
be  husbands  of  one  wife,  ruling  their  children  and  their  own  houses  well  '' 
(1  Tim.  iii.  8,  9,  12)  ;  -'  The  deacons  shall  be  approved  in  every  service 
.  .  .  husbands  of  one  wife,  educating  their  children,  sober-minded  .  .  . 
not  double-tongued  .  .  .  not  using  much  wine"  {Apost.  Can.  iv.)  ;  (of 
deacons)  "Not  using  much  wine,  not  greedy  of  lucre"  (1  Tim.  iii.  8)  ; 
(of  widows)  "  Not  greedy  of  lucre,  not  using  much  wine  "  {Apos.  Can.  v.)  ; 
"  For  they  that  have  served  well  as  deacons  gain  to  themselves  a  good 


OFFICE-BEARERS  IN  THE  PASTORAL  EPISTLES    147 

The  qualifications  demanded  of  deacons  also  practically 
consist  of  character  tested  by  behaviour  in  the  household — 
faithfulness_jta  J:5vile,'  and  evidence  of  parental  control  over 
children  and  wise  dealing  with  servants.^  It  is  also  interesting 
to  notice  a  ministry  of  women. 

Presbyters  or  elders  who  rule  well  are  to  be  honoured,  and  those 
who  in  addition  assist  in  the  ministry  of  the  Word  are  to  be 
doubly  honoured,  or  perhaps  to  receive  a  double  honorarium 
from  the  free-will  offerings  of  the  people.  Elders  who  do  not 
rule  well  are  to  be  looked  after ;  but  the  apostle  charges  his 
deputy  not  to  accept  accusations  against  them  rashly,  but  to 
follow  the  old  Jewish  rule  which  required  at  least  two  grave 
wtnesses  to  any  accusation  affecting  character.  But  if  an  elder, 
or  indeed  any  member  of  the  congregation,  did  fall  into  sin, 
public  rebuke  was  to  be  given  without  respect  of  persons.^  The 
apostle  also  insists  that  his  deputy  is  to  be  very  cautious  in 
admitting  to  Church  Communion  those  who  have  lapsed.  He 
is  not  "  to  lay  hands  hastily,"  ^  according  to  the  usual  form  in 

standing  "  (1  Tim.  iii.  13)  ;  "  For  they  who  have  served  well  as  deacons 
.  .  .  purchase  to  themselves  the  pastorate  "  {Apost.  Can.  vi.)  ;  and  so  on.- 
It  appears  to  me,  however,  that  the  hiteresting  series  of  parallels  afford 
striking  evidence  that  the  statements  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles  are  much 
older  than  those  in  the  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons.  In  the  former 
it  is  women  who  are  to  be  in  subjection,  and  the  phrase  corresponds  to 
1  Cor.  xiv.  34  ;  while  in  the  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons  it  is  the  con- 
gregation who  are  to  be  in  subjection  to  the  office-bearers  :  the  leaders 
and  the  led  of  the  Pauhne  Epistles  have  given  place  to  the  clergy  and  the 
laity  of  a  later  period.  Then  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles  the  deacons  who  have 
served  well  gain  to  themselves  "  a  good  standing  "  ;  in  the  later  document 
they  arc  promised  clerical  promotion,  which  is  a  very  different  idea  and 
suggests  a  much  later  period.  Again  in  the  former  document  the  senior 
office-bearers  are  to  be  faithful  husbands  (husbands  of  one  wife)  ;  in  the 
latter  it  is  said  that  it  is  better  that  they  be  not  married,  which  shows 
either  a  growth  in  ascetic  sentiment  or  perhaps  difficulties  in  a  fair  dis- 
tribution of  the  offerings  of  the  congregation  and  the  desire  for  distributors 
who  have  no  claims  on  themselves  to  influence  their  judgment,  or  both 
of  these  conceptions.     Compare  Chronologie,  pp.  483,  484. 

'  1  Tim.  iii.  8-10,  12,  13.  ^  j  xim.  v.  17-20. 

5  1  Tim.  v.  22.     Comiiarc  Hort   The  Christian  Ecclesia,  p.  175  S. 


148    THE  CHURCHES  CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

restoration,  ' '  on  any  man,  neither  to  be  a  partaker  of  other 
men's  sins." 

The  pictm'e  of  the  relief  of  the  poor  of  the  communitjMS^both 
vivid  and  homely.  It  brings  before  our  eyes  not  merely  that 
far-off  primitive  Christian  Chm:ch  of  Ephesus,  but  also  the 
present  work  of  a  Scottish  country  kirk-session.  When  the 
bread-winner  dies  careful  inquirers  are  to  be  made,  whether  the 
bereaved  widow  and  orphans  have  any  means  of  support,  or  can 
receive  any  aid  from  their  relations,  who  are  to  be  stirred  up 
to  do  their  duty  to  those  who  are  left  helpless.  If  the  children 
or  grandchildren  are  able  to  work  they  are  to  be  commanded 
to  support  her  who  has  been  left  a  widow  ;  but  if  such  help  fails, 
and  if  the  widow  is  too  old  to  earn  her  own  living  and  has  always 
borne  a  good  character,  then  she  is  to  be  placed  on  the  poor  roll 
of  the  congregation  and  supported  by  the  community. 

According  to  our  view,  these  Pastoral  Epistles  are  to  be  re- 
garded as  complementary  to  the  earlier  Epistles  of  St.  Paul, 
in  so  far  as  they  give  us  information  about  the  organization  of 
the  Gentile  Christian  communities.  The  earlier  epistles,  written 
to  the  various  churches,  reveal  the  principles  of  the  growth 
of  the  organization  lying  within  the  communities  themselves  ; 
while  the  Pastoral  Epistles,  written  to  guide  the  men  who  were 
to  be  the  apostle's  deputies,  and  had  to  be  instructed  in  his 
methods,  show  how  he  watched  over  the  communities  his  preach- 
ing had  gathered  together.  The  apostle  acted  like  a  wise  father, 
who  encourages  every  appearance  of  independent  and  responsible 
action,  but  at  the  same  time  carefully  guides  it  into  the  proper 
channels.  From  one  point  of  view  it  can  be  truly  said  that  the 
churches  of  St.  Paul's  mission  were  thoroughly  independent 
and  acted  on  their  own  responsibilities ;  from  another  the 
apostle  or  his  deputies  watched  over  and  guided  this  activity. 
There  was  control,  but  it  was  the  control  of  the  missionary, 
and  partook  largely  of  parental  monition  and  guidance. 

If  we  combine  what  is  given  us  in  the  earlier  Epistles  of  St. 
Paul  with  what  we  find  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles,  we  can  discern 


ORGANISATION   IN   THE   PAULINE  CHURCHES     149 

the  principles  of  organization  within  the  PauUne  communities. 
According  to  the  ideas  of  the  apostle,  _a  Church  of  God  was^ 
thoroughly  organized  when  it  found  within  its  membership  al  ^ 
variety  of  persons  endowed  with  various  spiritual  gifts  pro-  f 
ducing  activities  helpful  to  the  whole  community.     That  wasj 
the  real  basis  of  the  common  life,  the  divine  element  without 
which  all  else  was  of  little  moment,  and  with  which  everything 
else  was  a  matter  of  executive  detail.     These  gifts  were  divided 
into  two  great  classes,  those  which  served  for  the  ministry  of  the    ^  I 
Word,  and  those  which  were  at  the  foundation  of  other  kinds     i, 
of  ministry.     It  was  from  this  second  class  of  "  gifts  "  that  the 
ministry  of  the  local  churches  proceeded.     Among  them  we  find 
two  which  crystallise  into  ecclesiastical  office.     St.  Paul  calls 
them  "  wise  counsels  "  and  "  helps  "  {Ku^epvr'iG-eig  and  avTiXy- 
y^y^ei^,  1  Cor.    xii.   28)  ;    we   may  call   them   "  oversight "    and 
"  subordinate  service."     Whatever  may  have  been  the  original 
principle  of  association,whatever  suggestions  of  social  combination 
earliest  presented  themselves  to  the  minds  of  the  primitive  Chris- 
tians in  the  Gentile  Christian  communities,  whatever  the  human 
bands  that  bound  them  together,  these  two  classes  of  officials 
were  sure  to  emerge — the  one  fitted  to  guide^and  lead  the  brethren     /  - 
and  the  other  to  render  subordinate  service.  <,(^'i\.^''^'^ 

Some  time  must  have  elapsed  before  active  services  crystallised 
into  offices,  but  it  need  not  have  been  a  long  period.^  Things 
move  fast  in  young  communities  organizing  themselves  for  the 
first  time,  and  the  spiritual  gift  of  discernment  which  belonged 
to  the  whole  community  was  an  instrument  of  organization 
lying  ready  to  hand.  This  gift_of_l' discermnent,"  when  ap- 
plied to  teaching,  implied  that  those  who  were  really  believed 
to  be  the  mouthpiece  of  the  Holy  Spirit  were  to  be  heard  with 
reverence,  and  that  the  hearers  ought  to  fashion  their  lives 
according  to  what  was  taught.  The  same  gift,  when  applied 
to  the  discernment  of  abilities  for  rule  and  service,  implied  the 

*  Compare  the  evidences  of  growth  in  organization  collected  by  Gayford, 
Hastings'  Bible  Dictionary,  art.  Church,  i,  434, 


150    THE   CHURCHES  CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

power  to  select  and  bestow  office  upon  men  so  gifted,  and  the 
duty  of  the  community  to  obey  its  chosen  leaders  in  all  prac- 
tical matters. 

In  young  communities  full  of  a  fresh  and  active  enthusiasm, 
feeling  that  the  possession  of  "  gifts  "  of  rule  and  help  was  the 
fulfilment  of  the  promise  of  the  Master  to  be  present  with  them, 
and  that  the  "  gift "  of  discernment  enabled  them  to  select 
their  leaders  with  something  of  divine  authority,  activities 
helpful  to  the  community  would  speedily  become  offices.  There 
is  no  reason  to  prevent  us  from  believing  that  Stephanas  and 
the  others  whom  the  Corinthian  Church  are  ordered  to  reverence 
were  office-bearers  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word.^  Harnack 
and  many  others  are  disposed  to  deny  this.  They  argue  that 
there  is  no  trace  of  office-bearers  properly  so-called  in  St.  Paul's 
writings  composed  before  his  Roman  captivity,  although  they 
naturally  admit  there  must  have  been  ministries  from  the  very 
first,  and  that  the  ministries  took  shape  under  the  two  concep- 
tions of  "  oversight  "  and  "  subordinate  service."  It  may  be 
so,  but  the  arguments  do  not  convince  me.^  If  the  irpdicrrd- 
[xevoi  of  the  Epistles  to  the  Thessalonians  and  to  the  Romans 
were  not  office-bearers  they  did  the  work  of  office-bearers.  To 
assert  that  a  period  of  fifty  years  must  have  elapsed  before  the 
Trpo'ia-rdfxepoi  of  the  earlier  epistles  could  become  the  official 
TToecrlSvTepoi    of    the    Pastoral    Epistles  (which  is    practically 

1  Compare  Schmiedel,  Encyc.  Bihl.,  art.  Ministry,  3111  (d). 

2  Expositor  (1887,  Jan.-June),  328-31.  The  arguments  put  shortly 
are : — St.  Paul  addresses  his  advice  about  discipline,  etc.,  to  the  whole 
community  and  not  to  special  individuals  who  are  in  the  position  of  office- 
bearers ;  all  the  members  of  the  Christian  community  are  exhorted  to 
do  Avhat  is  enjoined  upon  the  leaders  (1  Thess.  v.  14)  ;  the  word  Ipyov 
(verse  12)  shows  that  an  office  is  not  thought  of ;  while  in  Rom.  xii.  6-8 
presidency  stands  between  "  Uberahty '-'-  and  "  showing  mercy,"  and  is 
described  as  a  "  gift "  !  The  same  arguments,  it  appears  to  me,  would 
exclude  the  presence  of  office-bearers  in  the  Didache  and  in  the  Epistle 
of  Clement ;  for  there  the  exhortations  to  exercise  discipline  are  ad- 
dressed to  the  whole  community.  The  fact  that  the  congregational 
meeting  is  the  supreme  judge  does  not  exclude  the  fact  of  office-bearers . 
Compare  below  pp.  171  ff.  for  the  Didache  and  176  n.  for  1  Clement, 


ORGANISATION  IN  THE   PAULINE  CHURCHES     151 

Loening's  contention),  or  that  the  development  required  eighty- 
years  (which  Harnack  requires),  seems  to  me  to  be  quite  un- 
warrantable. As  has  been  said  before,  things  move  fast  in 
young  communities  and,  so  far  as  the  development  in  organiza- 
tion goes,  there  is  no  reason  whatever  why  the  state  of  matters 
described  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles  should  not  have  arrived  at 
a  comparatively  early  date. 

It  is  quite  in  accordance  with  what  has  been  said,  that  in  all 
the  New  Testament  writings,  and  indeed  in  all  the  earlier  books 
of  discipline,  the  work  done  is  always  thought  more  of  than!  ^ 
the  persons  selected  to  do  it,  and  office-bearers  are  honoured  \ 
for  their  work's  sake  rather  than  for  their  rank.  The  one  thought 
running  through  all  the  earlier  documents  is  that  the  power 
to  render  special  service  to  the  community — for  rule  and  leader- 
ship according  to  primitive  modes  of  thought  are  always  founded 
on  "  service  "  and  never  on  "  lordship  " — depends  on  the  pos- 
session of  "  gifts  "  engrafted  by  the  Spirit  on  individual  character, 
and  the  occasion  of  these  particular  services  is  their  recognition 
by  the  community,  who  appoint  the  brethren  to  serve  it  in  ruling 
it.  One  of  the  chief  services  which  belonged  to  those  who  were 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  Christian  communities  was  to  set  an 
example  to  those  under  their  charge,  and  what  the  leaders  did 
all  the  brethren  in  their  several  places  were  expected  to  do, 
jHence  in  the  New  Testament  writings,  as  well  as  in  the  earlier 
:|canons,  the  qualities  which  were  to  determine  the  selection  of 
Ifmen  to  be  leaders  were  those  qualities  of  stable  Christian  char-  ' 
acter  which  all  Christians  ought  to  possess.  The  function  of 
the  missionary  or  his  deputy,  as  we  can  see  from  the  Pastoral 
Epistles,  was  to  advise  the  community  in  their  selection  of  those 
who  were  to  be  over  them,  and  to  inculcate  such  principles 
of  selection  as  would  abide  permanently  in  their  minds,  and  thus 
secure  a  succession  of  worthy  office-bearers  when  the  first  mis- 
sionaries of  the  Gospel  were  no  longer  present  to  advise  ;  or 
to  use  the  words  of  St.  Clement  of  Rome  :  "  Our  apostles  knew 
through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  that  there  would  be  strife  over 


152    THE  CHURCHES  CREATING   THEIR  MINISTRY 

the  name  (dignity)  of  the  overseer's  office.  For  this  cause,  there- 
fore, having  received  complete  foreknowledge,  they  appointed  the 
aforesaid  persons  (i.e.  their  first  converts)  and  afterwards  gave 
a  further  injunction  that  if  they  should  fall  asleep,  other  approved 
men  should  succeed  to  their  administration  "  ' — a  description 
of  what  takes  place  now  on  every  mission  field  of  the  whole 
Christian  Church. 

The  earlier  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  show  us,  as  has  been  said, 
that  the  services  rendered  to  the  local  churches  by  those  whom 
the  brethren  are  commanded  to  obey  for  their  works'  sake  were 
of  two  kinds,  which  we  have  called  "  oversight "  and  "  sub- 
ordinate service."  I  think  that  we  may  presume  that  these 
were  office-bearers,  if  not  from  the  beginning,  at  all  events  from 
a  very  early  period  ;  but  we  can  at  least  say  that  these  two 
different  kinds  of  service  were  rendered  by  the  leaders  to  the 
led.  Later  writings,  both  within  and  without  the  New  Testa- 
ment Canon,  make  it  plain  that  these  services  were  rendered 
by  two  classes  of  officials  who  bore  official  names,  which  still  exist 
within  the  Christian  Church,  We  read  of  j)astors,  overseers,  elders 
and  deacons  (TTot/jieVe?,  €7ri(TK07roi,'7rpe(T^vTepoi,  SkIkopoi).  The 
references  to  the  office-bearers  of  the  local  churches  are  always 
in  the  plural,  and  the  government  must  have  been  collegiate. 
Whatever  the  special  origin  and  primitive  meanings  of  the_first 
three  names,  they  appear  to  have  denoted  the  same  office,  and 
the  service  they  gave  was  what  the  foremen  or  the  irpoiaraiJievoi 
of  the  Epistles  to  the  Thessalonians  and  to  the  Romans  rendered 
to  their  respective  communities.      The  term  "  pastors  "  (tto/— 

'  Clement,  1  Epist.  xliv.,  1  ;  cf.  xlii.  4  ;  cf.  Sanday's  The  Conception 
of  Priesthood  (1898),  pp.  70-2.  The  sentence  in  Qement  (1  Epist.  xlii.  4) 
is : — "  So  preaching  everywhere  in  town  and  in  country,  they  appointed 
their  first-fruits  (ras  d7rapxci.<;  avrQir)  when  they  had  proved  them  by 
the  Spirit,  to  be  overseers  and  deacons  unto  them  that  should  believe." 

'  Compare  Lightfoot,  Philippians  (1881),  6th  ed.  pp.  95-9.;  Loofs, 
Thcologische  Stmlien  imd  Kritiken  (1890),  628-42 ;  Schmiedel.  Encyc. 
Bihl.  pp.  3135-9  ;  Loening,  Die  Qemeindeveifassung  des  Urcliristenthums 
(1889),  pp.  58-63.  [Compare  note  on  'Presbyters'  and  'Bishops'  at 
the  end  of  the  chapter. 


THE  NAMES  OF   OFFICE-BEARERS  153 

fxei'eg)  and  "overseers"  {e-Tria-KOTroi)  describe  the  kind  of  work 
done,  and  "  elder  "  {Trpecr/^vrepos)  was  the  title  of  the  office. 
This  name  naturally  suggests  a  Jewish  origin  ;  for  among  Jewish 
people  we  find  "  elders  "  from  the  earliest  to  the  latest  times. 
The  principles  of  social  organization  which  were  current  among 
the  Jews  no  doubt  insensibly  moulded  the  earliest  ecclesiastical 
organization  in  Palestine  ;  and  when  we  find  "  elders  "  in  charge 
of  the  community  in  Jerusalem,  ready  to  receive  the  contri- 
butions for  the  relief  of  those  who  were  suffering  from  the  famine 
which  overtook  them  in  the  reign  of  Claudius/  it  is  impos- 
sible to  doubt  that  the  name  came  from  their  Jewish  surround- 
ings. At  the  same  time  it  must  always  be  remembered  that 
Christian  "  elders  "  had  functions  entirely  different  from  the 
Jewish,  that  the  vitality  of  the  infant  Christian  Communities 
made  them  work  out  for  themselves  that  organization  which 
they  found  to  be  most  suitable,  and  that  in  this  case  nothing 
but  the  name  was  borrowed.^  The  respect  which  St.  Paul 
always  inculcated  toward  the  mother  Church  in  Jerusalem  and 
the  reception  among  the  primitive  Christian  congregations  of 
converts  from  Jewish  synagogues,  can  easily  account  for  the 
presence  of  the  name  within  Gentile  Christian  churches.  This 
does  not  mean  that  every  Christian  congregation  had  presbyters 
designedly  copied  from  the  Jewish  synagogue.  The  largest 
number  probably  copied  their  neighbours  when  they  came  to 
make  use  of  the  word  in  a  technical  fashion.  The  constant 
intercommunication  between  Christian  communities  which 
was  such  a  feature  of  primitive  Christianity  that  the  keen- 
sighted  Lucian  recognized  it  as  their  special  possession,^  promoted 

^  Acts  xi.  30. 

2  It  ought  to  be  remembered  that  the  organization  which  prevailed 
among  the  Judaising  Christians,  ^^'ho  refused  all  fraternal  intercourse  with 
the  Gentile  believers,  was  on  the  strict  Jewish  lines  and  was  quite  dif- 
ferent from  the  Christian.  Epiphanius  tells  us  (Heresies,  xxx.  18)  that 
their  congregations  were  presided  over  by  archons  and  an  archisynagogos 
like  the  Jewish  synagogues  of  the  Dispersion  ;    Compare  pp.  130-131; 

3  Lucian,  De  Morte  Peregrini,  12,  41. 


154    THE  CHURCHES   CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

the  gradual  assimilation  of  constitution  even  when  the  begin- 
nings were  of  different  origins.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  suppose 
that  the  Gentile  Christian  communities  took  the  word  from 
Judaism.  The  term  was  common  enough  to  denote  rulers  in 
the  Graeco-Roman  civilization ;  '  and  the  frequent  and  familiar 
use  of  the  word  to  denote  a  ruling  body  in  the  ordinary  social 
life  around  them,  if  it  did  not  altogether  suggest  the  use,  must 
have  at  least  facilitated  it  and  ensured  its  spread.  Besides, 
we  must  remember  that  the  word  "  elder,"  in  the  sense  of  ruler, 
is  one  of  the  commonest  expressions  among  all  nations.  The 
English  have  their  aldermen  and  the  Romans  had  their  senators, 
as  Dr.  Lightfoot  has  reminded  us.^  We  may  add  to  this  the  well- 
known  fact  that  in  young  Christian  communities  recently  won 
from  paganism  the  word  elder  is  applied  _naturally  to  those 
who  have  been  earliest  brought  to  believe  in  Christ,  and  that  the 
first  office-bearers,  or  those  to  whom  obedience  is  due,  are  usually 
taken  from  the  first  converts,  like  Stephanas  in  the  Corinthian 
Church. 

All  this  shows  us  that  during  the  last  decades  of  the  first 
century  each  Christian  congregation  had  for  its  office-bearers 
a  body  of  deacons  and  a  body  of  elders — whether  separated 
into  two  colleges  or  forming  one  must  remain  unknown — and 
that  the  elders  took  the  "  oversight "  while  the  deacons  per- 
formed   the    "  subordinate    services."     These    constituted    the 


^  Deissmann,  Bible  Studies,  Eng.  Trans,  pp.  154  ff.  and  233  ff.  Deiss- 
mann  shows  that  the  term  TrpecrfSiiTepo?  was  common  for  the  rulers  of  a 
a  corporation  in  Asia  Minor,  and  it  must  have  been  famiUar  to  the  in- 
habitants of  those  towns  v/hich  furnished  the  Christian  communities  among 
which  St.  Paul  saw  elders  chosen  on  his  return  mission  journey  through 
Derbe,  Iconium  and  Lystra  (Acts  xiv.  23).  One  of  the  most  interesting 
series  of  facts  which  Deissmann  has  unearthed  is  that  the  term  "  elder  " 
was  a  religious  official  name  in  Egypt,  and  that  the  affairs  of  the  whole 
Egyptian  priesthood  in  the  times  of  the  Ptolemies  were  conducted  by  an 
assembly  whose  members  (twenty-five  in  number)  were  called  Trpeo-fSvTepot. 
Milton  had  verjf  old  authority  for  his  saying  that  "  presbyter  is  but 
priest  writ  large." 

'  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  (1881),  6th  ed.  p.  96. 


THE  COLLEGE  OF  PRESBYTERS       155 

local  ministry  of  each  Christian  church  or  congregation — for 
these  terms  were  then  equivalent.  These  men  watched  over 
the  lives  and  behaviour  of  the  members  of  the  community ; 
they  looked  after  the  poor,  the  infirm,  and  the  strangers  ;  and 
in  the  absence  of  members  of  the  prophetic  ministry  they  pre- 
sided over  the  public  worship,  especially  over  the  Holy  Supper.^ 

Before  the  close  of  the  first  century  the  labours  of  apostles 
(and  under  this  name  a  large  number  of  wandering  missionaries 
must  be  included)  had  given  birth  to  thousands  of  these  local 
churches,  they  were  all  strictly  independent  self-governing 
communities — tiny  islands  in  the  sea  of  surrounding  paganism — 
each  ruled  by  its  session  or  senate  of  elders.  There  is  no  trace 
of  one  man,  one  pastor,  at  the  head  of  any  community.  The 
ruling  body  was  a  senate  without  a  president,  a  kirk-session 
without  a  moderator ;  and  if  its  members  did  not  themselves 
possess  the  "  prophetic  gift,"  their  authority,  however  defined, 
had  continually  to  bend  before  that  of  the  "  prophets  "  and 
"  teachers,"  to  whom  they  had  to  give  place  in  exhortation 
and  even  in  presiding  at  the  Lord's  Table.  The  organization 
of  the  Primitive  Christian  Church  in  the  last  decades  of  the  first 
century  without  one  president  in  the  community,  and  with  the 
anomalous  prophetic  ministry,  has  no  resemblance  to  any  modern 
ecclesiastical  organization,  and  yet  contains  within  it  the  roots 
of  all  whether  congregational,  presbyterian  (conciliar)  or  epis- 
copal. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  while  each  Christian  community 

^  While  everything  goes  to  show  that  in  primitive  times  the  function 
of  teaching  was  not  confined  to  the  office-bearers  or  rulers  it  is  difficult 
to  believe  that  leadership  and  teaching  were  not  frequently  associated. 
The  "  prophetic  '-  gift  was  so  highly  prized  that  it  was  only  natural  that 
men  possessing  it  in  combination  with,  the  "  gift"  of  oversight  should  be 
selected.  The  use  of  the  phrase  "  to  shepherd  "  in  connexion  with  the 
leaders  of  the  Christian  community  as  in  1  Peter  v.  2  {-rroifidvaTe  to  if 
v/xLi'  TTot/xviov  Tov  &€ov)  appears  to  include  more  than  simple  oversight, 
and  the  word  "  admonish,"  applied  to  the  Trpoio-ra/ACJ'ot  in  Thessalonica, 
seems  to  point  to  something  more  than  mere  leadership  in  the  very 
early  times. 


156    THE   CHURCHES  CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

was  a  little  self-governed  republic,  the  visible  unity  of  the  cor- 
porate Church  of  Christ  was  never  forgotten.  Although  each 
local  church  was  an  independent  society,  although  it  was  not 
connected  with  other  Christian  communities  by  any  organization 
of  a  political  kind,  it  was  nevertheless  conscious  that  it  be- 
longed to  a  world-wide  federation  of  equally  independent  churches. 
Its  self-containedness  did  not  produce  isolation.  On  the  con- 
trary, every  local  church  felt  itself  to  a  real  part  of  the  universal 
and  visible  Church  of  God  to  which  many  hundreds  of  similar 
societies  belonged.  "  All  the  churches  of  Christ,"  said  Ter- 
tulhan,  "  although  they  are  so  many  and  so  great,  comprise  but 
one  primitive  Church  .  ,  .  and  are  all  proved  to  be  one  in  un- 
broken unity  by  the  communicatio  fads,  et  appdlatio  frater- 
nitatis  et  contesseratio  hospitalitatisJ^  ^  They  kept  the  conception 
of  this  unity  alive  in  their  hearts  by  the  thought  that  all  shared 
the  same  sacraments,  were  taught  the  same  divine  mysteries, 
obeyed  the  same  commandments  of  God,  and  shared  the  same 
hope  of  the  same  kingdom.  They  made  this  corporate  unity 
apparent  by  mutual  help  in  all  Christian  social  work,  and  by 
boundless  and  brotherly  hospitality  to  all  fellow-Christians. 
The  picture  of  this  corporate  unity  was  always  before  their  eyes 
in  the  fraternal  intercourse  of  church  with  church  by  official 
letters  and  messengers,  and  was  made  vivid  by  the  swift  succes- 
sion of  wandering  "  apostles,"  "  prophets  "  and  "  teachers," 
who,  belonging  to  no  one  community,  were  the  ministers  of  the 
whole  Church  of  Christ — the  binding-stones  which  made  it 
visibly  cohere. 

"  De  Praescript.  20. 


PRESBYTERS   AND  BISHOPS  157 


NOTE    ON    "PRESBYTERS"    AND    "BISHOPS" 

The  view  taken  about  presbyters  or  elders  at  the  close  of  the 
preceding  chapter  was  for  a  long  time  undisputed  by  all  serious 
students  of  the  conditions  of  the  primitive  Church,  It  may 
be  found  stated  at  length  in  the  late  Dr.  Lightfoot's  Note  on 
"  The  synonymes  '  bishop  '  and  '  presbyter,'  "  in  his  Com- 
mentary on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians.^  It  has  been  disputed 
by  such  distinguished  scholars  as  Harnack,  Sohm  and  Weiz- 
sacker,  and  their  divergence  from  the  opinion  which  was  previ- 
ously held  with  great  unanimity  arose  after  and  in  consequence 
of  the  publication  of  the  late  Dr.  Hatch's  Bampton  Lectures 
in  1881. 

The  theory  about  early  ecclesiastical  organization  which 
embodies  this  change  of  view  as  to  the  relation  between  the 
"  presbyters  "  and  "  deacons,"  will  be  discussed  in  an  Appendix. 
The  matter  which  concerns  us  here  is  whether  "  presbyters  " 
were  church  officials,  chosen  and  appointed  as  such,  in  the  Church 
of  the  first  century,  and  identical  with  "  bishops,"  or  whether 
Harnack  is  right  when  he  says  that  "  We  meet  with  chosen  or 
appointed  presbyters  for  the  first  time  in  the  second  century. 
The  oldest  witnesses  for  them  are  the  Epistle  of  James,  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles,  the  Pastoral  Epistles,  the  Original  Document 
of  the  so-called  Apostolic  Ordinances,  and  the  ShepJierd  of 
Hermasy  ^ 

Harnack's  opinion,  if  I  do  not  mistake  him,  is,  when  put 
briefly,  as  follows.  He  believes  that  in  the  last  decades  of  the 
first  century  there  was  at  the  head  of  each  Christian  congre- 
gation what  may  be  called  a  three-fold  organization — a  pro- 

'  Pp.  95-9  of  the  6th  ed.  (1881). 

2  Expositor  for  1887,  Jan. -June,  p.  334.  In  a  footnote  Harnack  says, 
"  It  seems  to  me  very  improbable  that  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  was  written 
during  the  first  century." 


158  PRESBYTERS  AND  BISHOPS 

phetic,  a  patriarchal  and  an  administrative  one.  The  patri- 
archal rule  was  based  upon  the  natural  deference  of  the  younger 
to  the  older  members  of  the  community,  and  the  circle  of  elders, 
in  all  emergencies  which  affected  the  congregation,  could  come 
forward  as  their  guides  ;  these  elders  watched  over  the  conduct 
and  the  evangeUcal  character  of  the  members,  and  admonished, 
punished  and  exhorted  the  congregation.  The  elders  were  the 
natural  heads  of  the  community,  the  aged  members  who  were 
revered  on  account  of  age  and  character,  but  were  not  elected 
or  appointed  officials.  The  real  officials,  who  formed  the  ad- 
ministration, were  the  bishops  and  the  deacons — men  who  pos- 
sessed the  "  gifts  "  of  government  and  of  public  service.  They 
were  appointed  primarily  to  preside  at  pubHc  worship.  Origin- 
ally there  was  no  distinction  between  the  bishops  and  the  deacons 
save  what  came  from  age  and  experience,  but  their  work  naturally 
fell  into  two  divisions,  in  which  the  oversight  belonged  to  the 
bishops  and  the  subordinate  services  were  performed  by  the 
deacons.  The  bishops,  in  consequence  of  their  position  as  the 
officials  appointed  to  conduct  public  worship,  became  naturally 
the  custodians  and  administrators  of  the  property  of  the  congre- 
gation, the  distributors  of  the  gifts  of  the  faithful,  the  recognized 
guardians  of  the  poor,  the  sick,  the  inffi-m  and  strangers,  and 
the  representatives  of  the  society  to  people  outside. 

Harnack,  therefore,  holds  that  presbyters  and  bishops  were 
distinct  from  the  first.  He  believes,  besides,  that  while  a  circle 
of  elders,  in  the  sense  of  "  honoured  "  old  men,  existed  from 
the  most  primitive  times,  there  were  no  elected  or  chosen  elders 
forming  a  college  of  office-bearers  till  the  second  century ;  but 
he  thinks  that  the  bishops  were  usually  selected  from  the  circle 
of  honoured  old  men,  were  sometimes  called  "  elders,"  and  were 
invariably  classed  among  them.  In  reaching  this  conclusion 
he  rejects  as  unhistorical  the  statement  in  Acts  xiv.  23,  which 
tells  us  that  the  apostles,  Paul  and  Barnabas,  saw  to  the  ap- 
pointment of  elders  in  the  churches,  which  they  had  formed  in 
Derbe,   Lystra  and  Iconium ;  he  believes  that  the   "  elders " 


PRESBYTERS  AND   BISHOPS  159 

of  Acts  XX.  17  were  bishops  ;  he  concludes  that  the  "  elders  " 
of  1  Peter  v.  1  if.  were  not  office-bearers  ;  he  rejects,  as  an  inter- 
polation, the  veses  in  Titus  i.  7-9,'  which  practically  assert 
the  identity  of  bishops  and  presbyters  ;  and  he  finds  a  complete 
justification  of  his  views  in  the  statements  about  presbyters 
and  bishops  in  the  Epistle  of  Clement  to  the  Corinthians. 

Let  us  accept,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  the  critical  conclu- 
sion of  Harnack  about  the  dates  of  documents  ^  and  the  inter- 
polations which  may  have  come  into  texts,  and  then  see  what 
emerges  from  an  examination  of  the  authorities  in  which  presby- 
ters and  bishops  are  mentioned. 

The  Epistle  of  Clement  to  the  Corinthians  is  the  best  starting 
point,  for  there  is  practical  unanimity  among  scholars  of  all 
schools  that  this  document  belongs  to  about  the  middle  of  the 
last  decade  of  the  first  century.  The  letter  was  sent  from  the 
Roman  Church  to  remonstrate  with  the  Corinthian  Christians 


*  Compare  Otto  Ritschl  in  the  Theologische  Literatur-Zeitung  for  1885, 
No.  25, 

2  It  is  important  to  bear  in  mind  the  dates  which  Harnack  assigns 
to  the  various  documents  he  deals  with.  The  following  are  taken  from 
his  Chronologie  dcr  altchristlichen  Literatur  bis  Eusebius  (1897):  — 1  Peter 
was  probably  written,  he  thinks,  some  time  between  the  years  83  and 
93  AD.,  but  it  may  have  been  written  one  or  two  decades  earUer,  which 
gives  at  the  extreme  Umits  of  time  63-93  a.d.  (pp.  454,  718).  1  Clement 
he  dates  about  93-95  but  perhaps  as  late  as  97  a.d.  (pp.  255,  718).  The  dates 
he  gives  for  the  writings  which  he  sa3's  arc  the  first  witnesses  for  pres- 
byters are  :— The  Epistle  of  James  about  120-140  a.d.  (pp.  491,  719); 
the  Pastoral  Epistles,  or  at  least  those  verses  in  them  which  are  in  question 
about  130  A.D.  (p.  483)  ;  the  original  document  of  the  so-called  Apostohc 
Ordinances,  about  140-180.  Harnack  classes  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles 
among  this  set  of  documents  in  the  Expositor  (1887,  Jan. -June),  p.  334, 
and  says  that  the  book  belongs  to  the  second  century.  But  in  his  Chron- 
ologie which  was  published  ten  years  later,  he  says  that  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  was  written  some  time  between  80-93  a.d.  (pp.  250,  718).  There 
may  not  be  much  difference  between  the  year  93  a.d.  and  the  second  cen- 
tury ;  but  the  change  of  date  lifts  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  out  from  the 
other  writings  named  along  with  it  in  the  Expositor,  and  places  it  as  early 
as  the  Epistle  of  Clement  to  the  Corinthians  and  perhaps  as  early  as  the 
Epistle  of  Peter. 


160    THE  CHURCHES  CREATING  THEIR  MINISTRY 

about  the  dismissal  from  office  of  the  leaders  of  the  Church  there 
from  their  office.  We  find  three  names  given  to  these  men — 
rjyov^evoi,  €7r/cr/co7rot,  irpea-jSurepoi.^  Harnack's  contention  is 
that  TT peer ^vT€ pot  invariably  denote  the  members  of  the  circle 
of  revered  old  men  in  the  community,  and  that  when  the  term 
is  used  to  denote  office-bearers,^  they  are  so  called  because  they 
were  always  members  of  that  circle.  On  the  other  hand,  Light- 
foot,2  in  the  past,  and  Loening,  Loofs  and  Schmiedel  in  the  pre- 
sent, declare  that  Trpea-^vTepo?  is  the  technical  name  for  the 
office,  while  e-Tr/o-Tro/co?  describes  what  was  done  (having 
eiricrKOTni  or  oversight),  or  at  all  events  that  irpea-^vrepoii  and 
eTTia-KOTTo?  are  synonymous  terms  for  the  same  officials. 

One  thing  to  begin  with  is  significant.  Three  men  were 
sent  from  Rome  to  Corinth  with  the  letter,  Valerius  Bito,  Clau- 
dius Ephebus  and  Fortunatus,  "  men  that  have  walked  among 
us,"  says  the  writer,  "  from  youth  to  old  age  miblameably." 
They  belonged,  therefore,  to  that  class  whom  Harnack  supposes 
to  have  been  generally  called  "  presbyters,"  and  if  his  theory 
were  correct  we  should  expect  them  to  be  so  designated  in  an 
official  letter,  but  they  are  not. 

/  In  the  Church  in  Corinth  some  men  had  been  thrust  from 
office,  and  the  office  is  always  referred  to  as  e7ricr/co7r>).'*  This 
is  what  is  said  :  "  For  it  will  be  no  light  sin  for  us,  if  we  have 
thrust  out  of  the  oversight  {eTria-KOTrr/)  those  who  have  offered 
the  gifts  (i.e.   the  prayers  of  the  congregaton)   unblameably 

'  Tjyovfiivos  and  Trporjyovixeyos,  I.  i.  3  ;  xxi.  6.  cTrto-KOTrot,  I.  xlii.  4,  5. 
iTp€a-(3vTepo<i,  I.  i.  3  ;  iii.  3  ;  xxi.  G  ;  xliv.  5  ;  xlvii.  6  ;  Iv.  4 ;  liv.  2 ;  Ivii.  1 . 

2  I.  xliv.  5  ;   xlvii.  6  ;   liv.  2  ;   Ivii.  1. 

3  Lightfoot,  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  (1881),  6th  ed. 
p.  95  ff.  ;  Loening,  Die  Gemeindevcrjassunij  des  Urchristenthums  (1889), 
p.  58  ff.  ;  Loofs,  Studien  und  Kritiken  (190),  pp.  628  flf.  ;  Schmiedel, 
Encyclopaedia  Biblica  (1892)  p.  3134  ff.  If  we  apply  the  well-recognized 
critical  principle  that  the  statement  that  there  were  "elders"  in  Derbe, 
Lystra  and  the  neighboui'hood  when  the  book  which  describes  them  was 
written,  this  change  of  date  gives  us  "  elected  "  elders  before  the  close  of 
the  first  century. 

4  I.  xliv.  1,  4. 


PRESBYTERS  AND  BISHOPS  161 

and  holily.  Blessed  are  those  presbyters  who  have  gone  before, 
seeing  that  their  departure  was  fruitful  and  ripe,  for  they  have 
no  fear  lest  any  one  should  remove  them  from  their  appointed 
place.  For  we  see  that  ye  have  displaced  certain  persons 
though  they  were  living  honourably,  from  the  ministration 
(XeiTovpyia)  which  they  had  kept  blamelessly."  '  Every- 
thing implies  that  the  men  who  had  been  thrust  out  from  their 
eTTia-KOTDi  were  called  'presbyters.  This  inference  is  strengthened 
by  what  follows  :  "It  is  shameful  .  .  .  that  it  should  be  re- 
ported that  the  very  steadfast  and  ancient  Church  of  the  Corin- 
thians, for  the  sake  of  one  or  two  persons,  maketh  sedition 
against  its  presbyters."  ^  "  Only  let  the  flock  of  Christ  be  at 
peace  with  its  duly  appointed  presbyters."  ^  "Ye  therefore 
that  laid  the  foimdation  of  the  sedition,  submit  yourselves 
unto  the  presbyters."  '^  The  only  sentence  in  the  epistle  which 
lends  itself  to  the  theory  of  Harnack  is :  "  Let  us  reverence  our 
rulers  (-n-poyjyoujuievoi),  let  us  honour  our  elders  {Trpea-^vrepoi), 
let  us  instruct  our  young  men  in  the  lesson  of  the  fear  of  God  ; 
let  us  guide  our  women  toward  that  which  is  good ;  ^  where 
'  elders '  evidently  mean  old  men."  Schmiedel's  remark  on  the 
rhetorical  effect  of  substituting  "elders"  {Trpecr^urepoi)  for 
"old  men"  {irpea-^vrai)  is  a  sound  explanation  of  the  use 
of  the  words.^ 

'  I.  xliv,  4-6.        2  I.  xlvii.  6.        3  I.  Uv.  2.        4  ivii.  1.         5  xxi.  6. 

^  "  In  iii.  3  allusion  is  made  to  the  deposition  of  certain  Church  leaders, 
but  in  dependence  on  Isaiah  iii.  5,  where  of  old  age  it  is  said :  "  the  child 
will  press  against  the  old  man,"  Clement  can  very  well  have  preserved 
this  meaning  m  his  words  "  the  young  are  stirred  up  against  the  elder," 
as  he  has  also  retained  the  other  general  antithesis  from  Isaiah  :  "  the 
base  again  the  honourable."  Yet  the  selection  of  the  word  "  elders  "- 
(irpea-^vTepot)  instead  of  "  old  men  "  {it picrfivT at)  points  to  the  fact, 
only  too  well  known  to  the  readers,  that  it  was  against  official  presbyters 
that  the  rising  was.  "  Elders  "  (irpeafivTepoL)  in  this  case  has  a  double 
meaning  which  rhetorically  is  very  effective ;  and  so  also  young  men. 
For  since  according  to  xlvii.  6  only  one  or  two  persons  had  given  occasion 
to  the  offence,  it  is  possible  that  these  were  young  persons,  but  at  the  same 
time  also  that  they  stood  in  the  position  of  laymen  towards  the  presbyters 
in  so  far  as  these  were  official  persons."  Encydopcedia  Biblica,  p.  3135. 
CM.  11 


162  PRESBYTERS  AND   BISHOPS 

[  It  appears  to  me  that  the  Epistle  of  Clement,  on  which  Har- 
nack  so  firmly  reHes  to  estabhsh  his  conclusion  that  "  elders  " 
had  no  official  position  until  the  second  century,  fails  him  utterly, 
and  that  his  own  earlier  position  is  much  more  in  accordance 
with  the  facts  of  the  case.  In  his  edition  of  the  Epistles  of 
Clement,  published  in  1875,  Harnack  said,  commenting  on  the 
words  episcopi  et  diaconi  (xlii.  5) :  "  Luce  clarius  est,  duo  in 
clero  ordines  tum  temporis  (i.e.  in  the  time  of  the  apostles) 
fuisse,  episcopos  ( =  presbyteros)  et  diaconos."  ^  This  seems 
still  to  hold  good. 

When  we  turn  to  1  Peter  (v.  1^  2)  we  find  there  that,  even  if 
we  discard  the  disputed  reading  "  exercising  the  oversight " 
{eTna-KOTrovvreg),  the  elders  are  told  to  "  shepherd  the  flock 
of  God  which  is  among  you."  There  is  no  word  in  the  whole 
round  of  primitive  ecclesiastical  phraseology  which  is  more 
frequently  used  to  express  the  relation  of  office-bearers  than 
"to  shepherd"  (Troi/uaiveiv)  ;  and  the  difference  between 
"  shepherds  "  and  "  flock  "  is  much  greater  than  between  the 
more  aged  and  the  younger  members  of  the  society.^ 

In  Acts  XX.  17,  St.  Paul  summoned  the  presbyters  (rovs 
TTpecrlSvTepovg)  of  the  Church  of  Ephesus  to  meet  him  at  Miletus  ; 
he  charged  them  to  "  shepherd  the  Church  of  God  "  ;  he  called 
the  Church  a  "  flock "  (ttoIixviov)  ;  and  he  said  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  had  made  them   overseers    {eTricrKoirovg)    in    this 

^  Patruni  apostol.  opera,  I.  p.  132  n.  (p.  68,  n.  4,  in  ed.  of  1876). 

2  Loofs  says  that  he  is  so  convinced  that  the  presbyters  of  1  Peter  v.  1 
are  office-bearers,  that  if  the  argument  needed  it  (which  it  does  not)  he 
would  rather  beUeve  with  Mosheim  and  others  that  the  vecurcpot  were 
deacons.  Studien  und  Kritiken  (1890),  p.  638.  Schmiedel,  who  takes 
the  same  view,  asserts  the  fact  that  the  presbyters  have  to  be  warned 
against  "  discontent  with  their  office,  greed  and  ambition '-'  points  against 
the  early  date  of  the  epistle  {Encyclopasdia  Biblica,  p.  3134) ;  he  would  not 
have  said  this  had  he  known  much  about  Churches  in  the  mission  field  ; 
the  pregnant  remark  of  Dermey  (Hastings^  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  iii.  82  b), 
that  tendencies  to  antinomianism  seem  inseparable  from  every  revival 
of  religion,  religion  transcending  even  while  it  guarantees  morality,  ought 
to  be  kept  more  in  mind  than  it  is  by  students  of  early  Church  history.- 


PRESBYTERS  AND  BISHOPS  163 

flock.  Whatever  be  the  date  or  authorship  of  the  book  the 
fact  remains  that  the  author  did  believe  that  ^Ae^  presbyters 
(not  some  of  them)  were  the  "  overseers  "  and  the  "  shepherds  " 
of  the  Church  in  Ephesus.  They  were  the  office-bearers  there 
and  were  called  both  presbyters  and  overseers  or  bishops. 

These  statements  carry  us  a  long  way.  They  prove  to  us 
that  before  the  close  of  the  first  century  bodies  of  presbyters 
existed  as  ruling  colleges  in  Christian  congregations  over  a  great 
part  of  the  Roman  Empire.  The  Epistle  of  Clement  proves 
this  for  the  Roman  Church.  The  First  Epistle  of  Peter  proves 
it  for  Pontus,  Galatia,  Cappadocia,  Asia  and  Bithynia.*  The 
Apocalypse  confirms  the  proof  for  Ephesus,  Smyrna,  Pergamus, 
Thyatira,  Sardis,  Philadelphia  and  Laodicea.^  The  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  adds  its  confirmation  for  Ephesus  and  Jerusalem.^ 
The  writings  all  imply  that  the  colleges  of  presbyters  at  the  head 
of  congregations  were  no  new  institution.  They  had  evidently 
existed  for  a  long  time.  It  will  be  observed  that  the  places 
include  the  sphere  of  the  mission- journey  of  Paul  and  Barnabas. 
They  seem  to  me  to  confirm  what  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  tell 
us  of  the  institution  of  presbyters  by  the  apostles.'*  All  this  has 
been  reached  on  the  dates  of  the  writings  as  given  by  advanced 
critics. 

The  proofs  for  the  identity  of  the  offices  of  elders  and  bishops') 
in  the  Church  of  the  first  century  have  often  been  collected.)! 
They  may  be  arranged  thus  :  (1)  Acts  xx.  17 ;  St.  Paul  sent  for 
the  elders  of  Ephesus,  and  in  his  address  to  them  said  that  "  the 
Holy  Spirit  had  made  them  bishops  ;  (2)  in  1  Peter  v.  1,  2, 
elders  are  told  to  act  as  pastors  and  as  bishops  {irpecr- 
(3uTepoi  .  .  .  TTOi/mavaTe  .  .  .  eiricrKOTrovvTe'i) ;  (3)  in  1  Clement 
it  is  made  clear  that  at  Rome  presbyters  or  elders  and  bishops 
are  the  same  officials  ;  (4)  in  1  Timothy  a  description  of  bishops 
is  given  (iii.  1-7),  then  follows  what  is  required  of  deacons  (iii. 

'  1  Peter  i.  1.  2  Rev.  iv.  4,  10  ;  v.  5,  6,  8,  etc. 

3  Acts  XX.  17,  28^(Ephesus)  ;  xi.  30  ;  xv.  4,  6,  22  ;  xv4.  4  ;  xxi.  18  ; 
(Jerusalem).  4  Acts  xiv.  23. 


164  PEESBYTERS  AND  BISHOPS 

8-13) ;  in  v.  17-19  the  former  ministers  are  alluded  to  as  pres- 
byters ;  (5)  in  Titus  i.  5-7  we  find  that  "  thou  shouldest  set 
in  order  the  things  that  were  wanting,  and  appoint  elders  in 
every  city  ...  for  the  bishop  must  be."  ;  (6)  in  the  Peshito 
Syriac  Version  of  the  New  Testament  eTriG-KOTro?  is  usually 
translated  by  kashisho — elder  or  presbyter ;  (7)  the  opinion  of 
the  ancient  Church,  founding  on  these  passages,  and  voiced  by 
Jerome,  unhesitatingly  declared  that  in  the  apostolic  age  elders 
and  bishops  were  the  same  ;  and  this  idea  may  almost  be  said 
to  have  prevailed  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  down  to  the  Council 
of  TrmV 

The  word  episcopus  had  a  long  and^  varied  history  before  it 
was  used  in  connexion  with  the  Christian  Church.    Hatch  has 

^  Compare  Lightfoot,  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians 
(1881),  6th  ed.  95-9  ;  Loofs,  Studien  und  Kritiken  (1890),  639-41  ;  Light- 
foot  gives  quotations  from  Jerome,  but  omits  some  of  his  strongest  sayings  ; 
it  may  be  useful  to  quote  at  greater  length  froui  his  Commentary  on  Titus, 
i.  7  : — Idem  est  ergo  presbyter,  qui  episcopus  ;  et  antequam  diaboli 
instinctu  studia  in  religione  fierent,  et  diceretur  in  populis :  ego  sum 
Pauli,  ego  Apollo,  ego  autem  Cephae,  communi  presbyterorum  consilio 
ecclesiae  gubernabantur.  Postquam  vero  unusquisque  eos,  quos  bap- 
tizaverat,  suos  putabat  esse,  non  Christi ;  in  toto  orbe  decretum  est,  ut 
unus  de  presbyteris  electus  superponeretur  caeteris,  ad  quem  omnis 
ecclesiae  cura  pertineret,  et  schismatum  semina  toUerentur.  Putat 
aliquis  non  scripturarum,  sed  nostram  esse  sententiam,  episcopum  et  pres- 
byterum  unum  esse,  et  aliud  aetatis,  aliud  esse  nomen  officii  ;  relegat 
apostoli  ad  Philippenses  verl>a,  dicentis  (then  follow  the  passages  quoted 
above  in  the  text)  .  .  .  Haec  propterea,  ut  ostendercmus,  apud  veteres 
eosdem  fuisse  presbyteros,  quos  et  episcopos  ;  paulatim  vero  ut  dissen- 
sionum  plantaria  evellerentur,  ad  unum  omnem  soUicitudinem  esse  de- 
latam.  Sicut  ergo  presbyteri  sciunt,  se  ex  ecclesiae  consuetudine  ei,  qui 
sibi  praepositus  fuerit,  esse  subjectos  ;  ita  episcopi  noverint  se  magis 
consuetudine,  quam  dispositionis  dominicae  veritate,  presbyteris  esse 
majores,  et  in  commune  debere  ecolesiam  regere."  Gieseler  in  his  Com- 
pendium of  Ecclesiastical  History,  i.  pp.  88-90,  n.  1 ,  collects  a  large  number 
of  authorities  to  show  that  this  opinion  of  Jerome  was  held  throughout 
the  Mediaeval  Church  until  the  time  of  the  Council  of  Trent.  He  con- 
cludes by  saying  "  Since  the  Tridentine  Council,  the  institviio  divina  of 
episcopacy  and  its  original  difference  from  the  presbyterate  became  the 
general  doctrine  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  which  the  EngUsh  Episco- 
palians also  followed  in  this  particular,  while  the  other  Protestant  Churches 
returned  to  the  most  ancient  doctrine  and  regulation  on  the  subject^' 


PRESBYTERS  AND  BISHOPS  165 

tried  in  a  very  interesting  but  not  quite  conclusive  manner  to 
show  that  episcopi  were  officers  of  administration  and  finance  ;  ' 
Lightfoot  has  shown  that  the  Attic  bishop  was  the  commissioner 
appointed  to  inspect  a  newly  acquired  province,  and  that  the 
word  was  used  in  a  similar  way  outside  the  sphere  of  Athenian 
influence.  -^  In  the  Septuagint  episcopus  means  an  official  set 
to  oversee  work,  a  military  officer,  a  commissioner  to  carry  out 
the  orders  of  the  king.^  But  while  all  these  parallels  are  inter- 
esting much  may  be  said  for  the  more  commonplace  idea  that  the 
word  episcopus  niesins  simply  one  who  has  an  episcp^e,  one  who 
has  oversight  or  superintendence.  If  so  the  word  is  not,  during 
the  first  century,  the  technical  term  for  an  office-bearer  ;  it  is 
rather  the  word  which  describes  what  the  office-bearer,  i.e.  the 
elder,  does.  The  eldei"  was^the  episcopos,  overseer  or  superin- 
tendent, while  the  deacon  rendered  the  subordinate  services. 
The  office  connected  itself  therefore  with  the  Kv/Bepi/rja-ei?,  while 
deacon  was  related  to  the  di/riXi^yl/^ei?  of  1  Cor.  xii.  28.^  The 
use  of  the  words  in  the  earUest  Christian  literature  seem  to  bear 
out  this  idea."*  This  leads  to  the  conclusion  in  the  end  of  the 
preceding  chapter  that  elder  is  the  name  for  the  office,  while 
bishop  is  the  title  describing  what  the  elder  has  to  do.  It  can 
claim  the  support  of  Professor  Sandayof  Oxford  and  ofProfessor 

'  Bampton  Lectures  (1881),  pp.  36-16. 

2  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians,  pp.  95,  96. 

3  Compare  for  example  the  suggestive  phrase  in  Hermas:  iTna-Ki-mta-O^ 
aWrjXovi  Kai  avTiXap.fid.viO'Oi  dAAiJAwi/  ( Vis.  iii.  9). 

•♦  The  word  cTrtcrKOTros  is  used  of  Christ  in  1  Peter  ii.  25  and  of  God 
in  1  Clem.  lix.  3.  The  word  iirio-Koirr]  is  used  of  the  providence  of  God 
in  Luke  xix.  44  and  in  1  Pet.  ii.  12.  In  1  Clement  eVicTKOTr^,  in  the  sense 
of  exercising  oversight,  is  a  much  more  prominent  thought  than  tVio-KOTros. 
The  author  speaks  of  ovofxa  €7ricr/<07r»}s,  Aftroupyta  tTrtcTKOTr^s,  Swpa 
iTno-KOirrj<;  not  cVio-kottwi'  ;  Hermas  of  Ittlctkottol  .  .  .  cTrtcTKOTrr/cravTes 
dyj/ws.  Loofs  has  collected  a  number  of  similar  phrases  from  later 
authorities  in  Studien  und  Kritiken  (1890),  p.  629,  showing  that  there 
are  traces  of  this  way  of  regarding  lirLdKoiro^  as  late  as  the  end  of  the 
second  century.  Then  in  Titus  i.  7  the  article  is  prefixed  (tov  liri<jKOTrov) 
to  denote  that  a  type  is  spoken  of :  cf.  Lightfoot,  Commentary  on  the 
Epistle  to  the  Philippians,  p.  97,  n.  1. 


166  PRESBYTERS  AND  BISHOPS 

Loofs  of  Halle.'  Dr.  Loofs  asserts  that  in  his  opinion  the  idea 
that  eTTia-KOTTos  is  the  name  of  an  office,  and  not  the  term  de- 
scribing the  work  done  by  the  official,  is  the  irpwrov  \|/-ei'^09  of 
many  of  the  modern  attempts  to  investigate  and  describe  primi- 
tive ecclesiastical  organization. 

^  After  declaring  that  he  does  not  regard  eTricrKOTros  any  more  than 
TToi/jirjv  or  rjyovfxevos  as  a  technical  term  denoting  an  office,  Loofs  goes 
on  to  say : — "  Mir  scheint  in  der  vorschnellen  Annahme,  cTricrKOTro?  sei 
friihe  Amtsname,  Titel  gewesen,  ein  Trpwrov  ij/€v8o<s  vieler  neuerer 
Konstructionen  zu  liegen  ;  die  altere  Anschauung  halte  ich  durchaus 
nicht  fiir  veraltet ;  cTrtcrKOTros  ist  eine  Funktionsbezeichnung  und  bis 
ins  endende  zweite  Jahrhundert  hinein  genen  die  Spuren  davon,  dass  man 
ein  Bewusstsein  davon  hat,  dass  cTri'crKOTro?  weniger  Amtsname  als  Amts- 
beschreibung  ist."  Studien  und  Kritiken  (1890),  p.  628.  Compare 
Professor  Sanday,  The  Conception  of  Priesthood,  pp.  61-62. 


The  Churches  of   the   Second    and   Third    Cen- 
turies— Changing  their  Ministry 


167 


CHAPTER   V 

THE   MINISTRY  IN  THE   SECOND   CENTURY 

DURING  the  first  century  we  can  see  the  local  churches 
creating  their  ministry.  The  same  independence  marks 
their  action  in  the  second  century.  They  can  be  seen  changing 
the  ministry  they  have  inherited.  The  beginnings  of  the  change 
date  from  the  early  decades  of  the  second  century  ;  by  the  end 
of  the  century  it  was  almost  complete.  The  change  was  two- 
fold, and  concerned  both  the  prophetic  and  the  local  ministry. 
Stated  in  the  briefest  manner  it  may  be  described  thus  :  the 
"  prophetic  "  ministry  passed  away,  its  functions  being  appro- 
priated by  the  permanent  office-bearers  of  the  local  churches  ; 
and  every  local  church  came  to  supplement  its  organization  by 
placing  one  man  at  the  head  of  the  community,  making  him  the 
president  of  the  college  of  elders.  The  one  part  of  the  change 
which  came  about  in  the  second  century,  that  which  gave  the 
senate  of  the  congregation  its  president,  was  simple,  natural 
and  salutary  ;  it  came  about  gradually  and  at  different  times 
in  the  various  portions  of  the  Empire  ;  it  was  effected  peace- 
fully, and  we  hear  of  no  disturbances  in  consequence.*  The 
other  change,  which  meant  the  overthrow  of  the  "  prophetic  " 
ministry  of  the  apostohc  and  immediately  subsequent  period, 
was  a  revolution,  provoked  a  widespread  revolt  and  rent  the 
Church  in  twain. 

*  Ritschl's  idea  that  the  dissensions  in  the  Church  in  Rome  witnessed 
to  in  the  Pastor  of  Hermas  arose  from  the  attempt  to  force  on  this  change 
finds  httle  acceptance.  Compare  Ritsclil,  Die  Entstehung  der  aUkatlio- 
lischen  Kirche  (1857),  pp.  403,  535. 

169 


170     THE   MINISTRY  IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

To  understand  the  change  in  the  ministry  of  the  local  churches 
it  is  to  be  kept  in  mind  that  at  the  close  of  the  first  century 
every  local  church  had  at  its  head  a  college  or  senate  or  session 
of  rulers,  who  were  called  by  the  technical  name  of  elders,  and 
were  also  known  by  names  which  indicated  the  kind  of  work 
they  had  to  do — pastors,  overseers  {eirla-KOTroL).  This  was 
the  ministry  of  oversight.  To  each  congregation  there  was  also 
attached  a  body  of  men  who  rendered  "  subordinate  service," 
and  who  were  called  deacons — but  whether  they  formed  part 
of  the  college  of  elders,  or  were  formed  into  a  separate  college 
of  their  own,  it  is  not  easy  to  say.  The  change  made  consisted 
in  placing  at  the  head  of  this  college  of  rulers  one  man,  who 
was  commonly  called  either  the  pastor  or  the  bishop,  the  latter 
name  being  the  more  usual,  and  apparently  the  technical  desig- 
v^  nation.  The  ministry  of  each  congregation  or  local  church 
instead  of  being,  as  it  had  been,  two-fold — of  elders  and  deacons 
— became  three-fold — of  pastor  or  bishop,  elders  and  deacons. 
This  was  the  introduction  of  what  is  called  the  three-fold  min- 
istry. It  is  commonly  called  the  beginning  of  episcopacy ;  but 
j  that  idea  is  based  on  the  erroneous  conception  that  a  three-fold 
ministry  and  episcopacy  are  identical' 

In  order  to  show  what  the  change  was  and  what  it  meant, 
three  relics  of  the  oldest  Christian  literature  may  be  taken, 
the  Didache  or  the  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles,  certain  frag- 
ments which  are  sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  and  the  Letters 
of  Ignatius  of  Antioch.  Authorities  differ  about  the  dates  of 
these  documents,  but  it  may  be  taken  as  well  ascertained  that 
they  all  belonged  to  the  years  between  l(Xl-an.d^J^80A,.j>r^ 

In  the  first  mentioned  we  find  the  Christian  society  ruled 
by  a  college  of  office-bearers  who  are  called  "  overseers  and 

'  The  Presbyterian  or  Conciliar  system  of  Church  government  is  as  much 
a  three-fold  ministry  as  episcopacy. 

2  My  own  opinion  incUnes  to  the  following  dates :  The  Epistles  of 
Ignatius,  about  116  a.d.  ;  the  Didache,  not  earlier  than  135  a.d.  ;  the 
Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  between  140-180  a.d.  Compare  note  on 
next  page. 


V 


THE  TEACHING   OF   THE   TWELVE   APOSTLES     171 

deacons  "  ;  in  the  second  we  see  one  bishop  or  pastor  (the  terms 
are  synonymous  in  the  document),  a  session  of  elders  and  a 
body^fdeacons,  but  the  elders  rule  over  the  bishop  as  they  rule 
the  congregation,  and  the  bishop  is  not  their  president ;  in 
the  third  we  have  the  three-fold  ministry  of  bishop,  elders  and 
deacons  constituting  a  governing  body'  at  the  head  of  the  con- 
gregation or  local  church. 

The  Didache  or  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles  ^  is  a  short 

*  In  the  Ignatian  Epistles  the  bishop,  elders  and  deacons  are  named 
together  twelve  times:  Magn.  ii.,  vi.,  xiii. ;  Trail,  vii.  ;  Philad.  pref.,  iv., 
vii.  ;  Smyrn.  viii.,  xii.  ;  Polyc.  vi.,  ;  Trail,  ii. ;  Philad.  x.  ;  and,  in  the 
first  ten  at  least,  tlie  three  classes  of  office-bearers  form  an  inseparable 
unity. 

^  The  manuscript  of  the  Didache  was  discovered  in  1873  in  the  library 
of  the  monastery  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  in  the  Phanar  or  Greek  quarter 
of  Constantinople  by  Philotheus  Briennios,  Patriarch  of  Nicomedia.  It 
was  pubhshed  by  him  in  1883.  It  is  now  known  by  numerous  editions. 
Of  these  by  far  the  best  comes  from  the  pen  of  Professor  Harnack  of  Berhn, 
and  it  is  to  that  edition  that  the  references  in  the  notes  here  are  made. 
It  is  difficult  to  say  what  country  gave  birth  to  this  manual.  The  external 
evidence  is  all  in  favour  of  Egypt ;  and  Harnack  and  Lightfoot  conclude 
that  it  came  from  that  land.  The  only  evidence  worth  mentioning  which 
seems  to  invahdate  this  conclusion  is  the  sentence  in  the  eucharistic 
prayer  : — "  Just  as  this  broken  bread  was  scattered  over  the  hills  and  having 
been  gathered  together  became  one,  so  let  Thy  Church  be  gathered  to- 
gether from  the  ends  of  the  earth  into  Thy  kingdom  " — words  which  cannot 
refer  to  Egypt  but  which  might  appropriately  describe  the  corn  of  the 
Lebanon  or  the  regions  beyond  the  Jordan.  But  there  is  no  reason  why 
the  eucharistic  prayer  might  not  come  from  Palestine  and  be  received 
into  the  Churches  of  Egypt.  The  external  evidence  proves  the  use  and 
the  knowledge  of  the  manual  in  Egypt,  and  the  internal^  with  the  exception 
of  the  sentence  quoted,  confirms  the  idea.  A  few  Anghcan  scholars 
have  done  their  best  to  minimise  the  value  of  the  book  and  its  evidence. 
A  good  example  of  this  depreciation  is  to  be  found  in  Bishop  Gore's 
The  Ministry  of  the  Christian  Church  (1893),  3rd  ed.,  App.  L.  p.  410.  It 
is  very  difficult  to  determine  the  date.  The  Didache  quotes  the  Epistle 
of  Barnabas  and  is  quoted  by  Clement  of  Alexandria,  and  the  date  assigned 
is  practically  determined  by  the  date  fixed  for  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas. 
The  probable  date  of  this  epistle  depends  on  whether  the  events  referred 
to  in  the  sixteenth  section  describe  the  condition  of  things  in  the  time  of 
Domitian  or  of  Hadrian.  Personally  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  re- 
ferences in  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas  are  to  the  later  period.  If  this  be  the 
case  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  place  the  Didache  earlier  than  135  a.d.,  i.e. 


172     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY 

Christian  manual,  of  composite  character,  containing  rules  for 
the  conduct  of  individual  men  and  women,  and  regulations 
for  the  guidance  of  small  Christian  communities,  hundreds  of 
which  must  have  been  scattered  over  the  wide  face  of  the  Raman 
Empire  in  the  second  century.  The  sixteen  paragraphs  of  this 
little  manual  are  well-arranged  when  compared  with  most 
manuals  of  the  same  kind.  The  ^rst  six  contain  simple  direc- 
tions for  living  the  Christian  life,  based  upon  the  Beatitudes 
of  our  Lord  and  the  Ten  Commandments.  They  seem  to  have 
formed  the  instruction  administered  to  catechumens  before 
baptism.  Then  follow  directions  about  baptism,  fasting  and 
prayer  and  the  Eucharist.  Three  sections  are  devoted  to 
injunctions  which  concern  the  "  prophetic  ministry."  Then 
follow  instructions  about  the  Lord's  Day,,  services,  and  the 
selection  of  office-bearers.  The  whole  concludes  with  a  warning 
about  the  last  days. 

TertulHan  has  said :  "  We  Christians  are  one  body  knit 
together  by  a  common  religious  profession,  by  a  miity  of  dis- 
cipline and  by  the  bond  of  a  common  hope."  ^  This  little 
manual  reads  like  a  commentary  on  the  saying.  Every  way- 
faring stranger  seeking  food  and  lodging  was  to  be  received 
and  fed  if  he  came  with  a  profession  of  the  Christian  faith. 
The  letter  of  commendation  which  was  in  use  among  the  Jews 
and  to  which  St.  Paul  refers,  was  not  required  to  ensure  a  hos- 


later  than  the  Ignatian  letters.  The  majority  of  scholars  place  it  very 
much  earlier.  The  commonest  date  is  about  100  a.d.  Wordsworth, 
Hitchcock  and  Brown,  Spence,  Bonwetsch,  Massebieau  ;  a  few  place  it 
earlier — Funk  and  Loening,  between  80  and  100  a.d..  Zahn  dates  it 
80-120  and  more  exactly  about  110  a.d.  ;  Bryennios,  its  first  editor, 
gives  120-130,  and  Harnack  130-160  a.d.  as  the  probable  date.  Hilgen- 
feld,  who  finds  traces  of  Montanism  in  the  writing,  places  it  later  than  160. 
For  our  purposes  an  exact  determination  of  date  is  unnecessary ;  all  that 
we  have  to  deal  with  is  that  the  Didache  describes  the  condition  of  a 
Christian  organization  some  time  between  the  Epistles  of  S.  Paul  and 
the  third  century. 

'  Apology  39  ;   elsewhere  {Be  Praescrip.  20)  he  speaks  of   the  contes- 
seratio  hospitalitatis  which  Unked  all  Christians  together. 


THE  TEACHING   OF  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES    173 

pitable  reception  ^  for  one  night  at  least.  It  was  better  to  be 
imposed  upon  sometimes  than  to  miss  the  chance  of  entertain- 
ing a  brother  Christian.  But  this  hospitahty  was  not  to  be 
without  discrimination.  "  Let  every  one  coming  in  the  name 
of  the  Lord  be  received,  but  afterwards  ye  shall  test  him  and 
know  the  true  from  the  false  ;  for  ye  shall  have  insight.  If  he 
Cometh  as  a  traveller,  help  him  as  much  as  you  can  ;  but  he  shall 
not  remain  with  you  unless  for  two  or  three  days  if  it  be  neces- 
sary. If  he  will  take  up  his  abode  with  you  and  is  an  artizan, , 
let  him  work  and  so  eat ;  but  if  he  has  no  trade  provide  employ- 
ment for  him,  that  no  idler  live  with  you  as  a  Christian.  But' 
if  he  will  not  act  according  to  this  he  is  a  Christ-trafficker ; 
beware  of  such."  ^  The  brotherly  love  of  these  early  Christians 
was  a  real  and  practical  thing  which  no  experience  of  imposition 
seems  to  have  damped.  Their  simple  rules  are  witness  to  the 
fact  that  they  were  sometimes  imposed  upon,  and  Lucian's 
account  of  the  impostor  Peregrinus,  shows  how  a  heathen  could 
see  that  their  charity  was  often  abused.^ 

One  does  not  naturally  expect  to  find  an  elaborate  ecclesi- 
astical organization  among  these  simple  folk,  and  there  are  no 
traces  of  it.  The  Didache  reveals  a  state  of  matters  not  unUke 
what  we  see  in  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul.  The  control  in  all 
things  evidently  rested  with  the  community  met  in  congrega- 
tional meeting.  It  is  to  the  community  as  a  whole  that  all  the 
directions  are  addressed.  It  receives,  tests,  finds  work  for  or 
sends  away  the  travelling  strangers  who  ask  assistance  or  hospi- 
tality. It  discharges  all  these  duties  of  Christian  benevolence 
which  we  find  elsewhere  laid  upon  the  president.'^  It  is  the 
community,  in  congregational  meeting,  which  tests  and  receives 
or   rejects   the   members   of  the   "  prophetic  ministry "   when 

'  Compare  2  Cor.  iii.  1.  These  commendatory  letters  became  the  rule 
at  a  later  period  in  the  Christian  Cluirch.  Compare  Smith's  Dictionary 
of  Christian  Antiquities,  I.  407. 

-  Cliapter  xii.  3  Peregrinus  Proteus,  13. 

4  In  Justin  Martyr's  A-pology  it  is  the  president  (Trpoeo-rws)  who  succours 
strangei-s  and  travellers  :   Apology,  i.  67. 


y 


174     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY 

(tj  '  they  appear.  The  injunctions  about  baptism,  fasting,  prayers, 
(  are  all  given  to  the  whole  community,'  and  not  to  the  office- 
bearers ;  and  yet  office-bearers  did  exist  among  them  whom 
the  community  are  required  to  elect  and  to  honour. 

The  manual  bears  evidence  to  the  value  of  the  "  prophetic 
ministry."  Its  members  are  to  be  honoured  in  a  very  special 
fashion.  If  a  prophet  is  present  he  is  to  preside  at  the  Lord's 
Table,  and  his  prayers  are  to  follow  his  heart's  promptings ;  ^ 
if  no  prophet  was  present,  one  of  the  office-bearers  presided  ; 
but  he  had  to  use  a  fixed  form  of  prayer.  The  duty  of  obeying 
the  members  of  the  "  prophetic  ministry  "  who  speak  the  Word 
of  the  Lord  is  laid  down  in  the  most  solemn  manner.  Prophets 
and  teachers  who  happen  to  be  residing  within  the  community 
are  to  be  supported  by  the  members  ;  the  first  fruits  are  to  be 
set  aside  for  them  ;  and  in  this  respect  they  are  like  the  high 
priests  of  the  Old  Testament.^ 

The  figures  of  these  prophets,  true  and  false,  which  are  some- 
what shadowy  in  the  New  Testament,  take  definite  shape  in 
this  ancient  church  directory.  We  see  the  stir  in  the  com- 
munity when  the  prophet  arrives.  The  women  hasten  to  set 
apart  the  first  baking  of  bread,  the  first  cup  of  the  newly  opened 
wine-skin  or  jar  of  oil,  the  first  yard  or  two  of  the  newly  spun 
cloth  *  for  the  use  of  these  men,  gifted  with  magnetic  speech, 

^  "  Now  concerning  baptism,  thus  baptize  ye  :  having  first  uttered 
all  these  things  (i.e.  the  instructions  given  in  cc.  i.-vi.),  baptize  into  the 
name  of  the  Father  and  of  tlie  Son  and  of  the  Holy  Cjliost  in  living  (running) 
water.  But  if  thou  hast  not  living,  baptize  in  other  water :  and  if  thou 
canst  not  in  cold  then  in  warm.  But  if  thou  hast  neither,  pour  water 
thrice  upon  the  head  unto  the  name  of  tlie  Tather,  the  Son  and  the  Holy 
Ghost.  But  before  the  baptism  let  the  baptizer  and  the  baptized 
fast  and  whatever  others  can  ;  but  the  baptized  thou  shalt  command  to 
fast  for  one  or  two  days  before,"  c.  vii. 

^  "  But  permit  the  prophets  to  give  thanks  as  much  as  they  will,"  x.  7. 

3  "  Every  first  fruit  .  .  .  thou  shalt  take  and  give  to  the  prophets  ; 
for  they  are  your  high-priests,"  xiii.  3. 

4  "  Every  first  fruit  then  of  the  produce  of  the  wine-press  and  of  the 
threshing-floor,  of  oxen  and  of  sheep,  thou  shalt  take  and  give  to  the 
prophets.  ...  If  thou  bakest  a  baking  of  bread,  take  the  first  of  it  and 


THE  TEACHING  OF  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES    175 

who  have  come  to  edify  the  little  society  and  instruct  them  in 
the  ways  of  the  Lord. 

Not  that  every  one  who  comes  among  them  saying  that  he 
is  a  prophet  is  to  be  received  as  such.  If  he  asks  for  money, 
if  he  does  not  practise  more  than  he  preaches,  if  he  has  not  the 
ways  of  the  Lord — then  he  is  a  false  prophet  and  is  to  be  sent 
away.'  For  the  Christian  communities  felt  that  they  had  the 
presence  of  their  Lord  with  them  according  to  His  promise, 
and  had  the  gift,  however  rudely  it  might  be  shown  and  exer- 
cised, of  testing  even  "  prophets  "  and  "  apostles."  When  the 
members  of  this  prophetic  ministry  were  received  they  were 
the  only  persons  permitted  to  abide  within  the  community 
without  earning  their  living  by  artisan  or  other  labour.  Their 
labour  was  the  instruction  and  edification  of  the  members  of  the 
society.^ 

Although  the  community  was  honoured  with  the  presence 
of  these  gifted  men,  and  although  the  congregational  meeting  was, 
as  in  the  Churches  of  Corinth  and  Thessalonica,  the  centre  and 
seat  of  rule,  the  brethren  were  directed  to  elect  office-bearers. 
The  context  gives  the  reason.  "  But  on  the  Lord's  Day  do  ye 
assemble  and  break  bread  and  give  thanks,  after  confessing 
your  transgressions,  in  order  that  your  sacrifice  may  be  pure. 
But  every  one  that  hath  controversy  with  his  friend,  let  him  not 
come  together  with  you  until  they  be  reconciled.  .  .  .  There- 
fore appoint  for  yourselves  bishops  and  deacons  worthy  of  the 
Lord,  men  meek  and  not  avaricious,  upright  and  proved,  for 
they  too  render  you  the  service  of  the  prophets  and  teachers."  ^ 
The  office-bearers  are  needed  to  act  as  judges  in  quarrels  within 


give  according  to  the  commandment;.  In  like  manner  when  thou  openest 
a  jar  of  wine  or  oil,  take  the  first  of  it  and  give  to  the  prophets  ;  and  of 
money  and  clothing  and  every  possession  take  the  first,  as  may  seem  good 
unto  thee,  and  give  according  to  the  commandment,"  xiii.  3-7. 

'  xi. 

2  "  But  every  true  prophet  who  will  settle  among  you  is  worthy  of  his 
support.  Likewise  a  true  teacher,  he  also  is  worthy,  like  the  workman, 
of  his  support "  ;    xiii.  1,  2.  3  xiv.  1-2  ;    xv.  1,  2. 


176     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY 

the  community,  and  to  act  as  the  "  wise  men  "  whom  St.  Paul 
asked  the  Corinthians  to  appoint/  They  are  also,  whether  in 
turn  or  otherwise  we  do  not  know,  to  preside  at  the  Holy  Supper 
and  to  edify  the  community,  for  they  are  to  serve  as  "  prophets 
and  teachers."  ^  There  is  no  division  of  labour  indicated  be- 
tween the  bishops  (presbyters)  and  the  deacons  ;  and  the  same 
qualities  of  meekness,  uprightness,  proved  Christian  character 
and  the  absence  of  avarice  are  demanded  of  both. 

What  went  on  in  the  smaller  took  place  in  the  larger  Christian 
communities  ;  the  outlines  of  the  picture  sketched  for  us  in 
the  Didache  appear  also  in  the  Epistle  of  Clement  ^  and  in  the 
quaint  Pastor  of  Hermas,  At  the  head  of  the  community, 
as  regular  office-bearers,  were  a  number  of  men  presbyter-bishops 

»  1  Cor.  vi.  5. 

*  "  They  render  you  the  service  of  the  prophets  and  teachers.  There- 
fore neglect  them  not ;  for  they  are  your  honoured  ones  along  with  the 
prophets  and  the  teachers  "  :  xv.  1,  2.  This  passage  is  rightly  regarded 
by  Harnack,  and  in  this  Sanday  follows  him,  as  of  the  utmost  importance 
to  enable  us  to  trace  the  development  of  the  Christian  ministry  in  the 
primitive  Church.  It  must  be  referred  to  later.  It  is  sufficient  to  say 
here  that  we  see  the  change  taking  place  whereby  the  ministry  of  the  local 
Church  secured  the  place  at  an  earlier  period  possessed  by  the  prophetic 
ministry.  Compare  Harnack's  edition  of  the  Didache  in  Texte  und  Utiter- 
suchungen,  II.  i.  58  note  ;  ii.  140  ff.  ;  Sanday,  Expositor  (1887),  Jan.- 
June,  p.  14  ff.  The  word  tl/jlt)  was  specially  used  to  denote  the  respect 
due  to  spiritual  guides  (compare  Harnack's  note  for  references)  ;  it  is  a 
question  whether  the  "  honoured  ones  "  are  also  those  who  "  receive  an 
honorarium  "  (for  the  Greek  word  has  the  double  reference)  ;  the  prophets 
and  teachers  received  the  firstfruits  in  preference  to  the  poor.  Did 
the  bishops  and  deacons  who  are  placed  among  the  honoured  spiritual 
guides  partake  of  these  first  fruits  also  ?  The  Didache  does  not  answer 
the  question. 

3  In  the  Epistle  of  Clement  we  find  that  the  congregation  is  the  supreme 
authority  ;  the  letter  is  addressed  to  the  whole  Church  :— "  To  the  Church 
which  sojourneth  in  Corinth  "  (preface) ;  the  evil-doers  are  urged  to  do 
"  what  is  ordered  by  the  people  "  (liv.  2).  The  office-bearers  are  a  number 
of  presbyter-bishops  and  deacons  (compare  above  pp.  159  ff.).  The  epistle 
says  little  or  nothing  about  a  "  prophetic  ministry  "  but  that  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  as  it  was  written  for  a  definite  purpose  which  had  nothing  to 
do  with  the  question.  In  Hermas  we  have  the  same  organization  and 
the  distinct  traces  of  prophets  and  their  ministry. 


THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY      177 

with  deacons  as  their  assistants,  but  the  congregation  is  seen  to 
be  the  supreme  judge  in  the  last  resort.  The  people  xule 
and  form  a  little  democracy  ;  they  choose  their  office-bearers 
who  lead  their  devotions  and  act  as  arbiters  in  all  dis- 
putes. They  are  a  self-governing  community.  They  can  even 
reject  the  services  of  men  who  assert  that  they  are  members 
of  the  prophetic  ministry.  They  can  do  this  in  God's  name. 
They  are  a  theocracy  as  well  as  a  democracy.  The  "  gifts  " 
of  the  Spirit  are  present  in  their  midst  and  are  manifest  in  the 
power  of  judging. 

Our  second  document  is  what  Harnack  calls  the  Original 
Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons. \  These  sources  are  but  frag- 
ments, preserved  because  they  have  been  incorporated  in  a 
much  later  law-book  of  the  Christian  Church.  We  do  not  know 
from  what  land  they  came  nor  how  wide  or  narrow  was  the  sphere 
of  their  authority.  They  show  us,  however,  what  a  small 
Christian  community  was  in  the  last  decades  of  the  second 
century,  and  they  describe  the  way  in  which  it  was  created  out 
of  a  number  of  Christian  famiUes.  We  can  see  the  birth  and 
growth  of  a  Church  with  its  complete  organization.  In  many 
respects  the  process  described  can  be  seen  now  in  any  mission 
field,  especially  among  peoples  of  ancient  civilization.     Perhaps 

^  A  summary  of  the  critical  history  of  the  Apostolic  Canons  (to  be 
distinguished  from  the  Apostolic  Constitutions)  will  be  found  in  Hamack's 
edition  of  the  Didache  {Texte  und  Untersuchungen,  II.  ii.  p.  193-209) 
followed  by  Harnack's  critical  reconstruction  based  on  the  discovery  of 
the  Didache  (pp.  209-25),  and  lastly  the  full  text  of  the  canons  (pp.  225-37), 
tables  and  summary  (pp.  237-41).  According  to  generally  accepted 
critical  opinions  the  compiler  of  the  Canons  used  four  sources,  the  Epistle 
of  Barnabas,  the  Didache  (or  more  probably  an  abridgement  of  the  Didache), 
and  two  fragments  from  an  old  ecclesiastical  law-book.  It  is  with  these 
fragments  that  we  have  now  to  do,  or  rather  with  the  first  of  them.  Har- 
nack dates  it  at  some  time  between  1-40  and  180  a.d.  These  fragments, 
with  commentary  and  excursus,  have  been  pubhshed  by  Harnack  in  the 
Texte  und  Untersuchungen,  II.  v.  Professor  Sanday  appears  to  agree 
with  Professor  Harnack  about  these  fragments  :  Expositor  (1887),  Jan.- 
June,  pp.  20,  21,  106.  Harnack's  edition  of  the  Sources  has  been  trans- 
lated into  Enghsh  by  L.  A.  Wheatley  under  the  title  Sources  of  the  Apostolic 
Canons  (1895). 

CM.  12 


178     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

the  most  interesting  thing  about  it  is  that  every  body  of  Christians 
however  small  is  ordered  to  form  itself  into  a  congregation, 
and  the  implied  thought  that  the  Christian  life  must  be  hved 
within  an  orderly  Christian  society  before  the  full  benefits  which  "^ 
accompany  it  can  be  enjoyed. 

The  document  takes  us  back  to  a  time  when  a  few  Christian 
families  found  themselves  the  only  believers  in  the  midst  of  a 
surrounding  paganism.  Few  or  many,  they  are  commanded 
to  organize  themselves  as  a  church.^  If  the  families  number 
less  than  twelve,  or  rather  if  they  include  fewer  than  twelve 
-persons  entitled  to  yoteJn_the_£lecti2a,  it  is  supposed  that  they 
need  aid  in  the  first  important  step  in  the  organization,  which 
is  the  selection  of  some  one  to  be  their  pastor  or  bishop — the 
names  are  synonymous  in  the  document.^  In  this  case  they  are 
to  apply  to  a  nm£Ji]3DiiririgJ1]vnpt'i«'^  pnmrpnnity  which  has  been 
estabhshed  for  some  time,  and  ask  them  to  appoint  three  men 
to  assist  them  to  select  their  pastor.^    Along  with  these  three, 


^  "If  there  are  few  men,  and  not  twelve  persons  who  are  competent  to 
vote  at  the  election  of  a  bishop,  the  neighbouring  Churches  should  be 
written  to,  where  any  of  them  is  a  settled  one,  in  order  that  three  selected 
men  may  come  thence  and  examine  carefully  if  he  is  worthy."  Sources 
of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  pp.  7,  8.  (Here  and  elsewhere  I  quote  from  the 
English  translation  of  Harnack's  edition  in  the  Texte  und  Untersuchungen, 
11.   V.) 

*  The  word  cTrtcrKOTros  occurs  in  i.  4,  22  ;  ii.  15,  19  ;  and  Troifxrjv  in 
ii.  18. 

3  The  phrase  is  IkX^ktoI  rpeis  av8p€S.  Various  parallels  may  be  found 
to  the  employment  of  three  chosen  men  to  conduct  together  work 
requiring  tact  and  experience.  The  most  obvious  is  the  mission  of  the 
three  men  Claudius  Ephebus,  Valerius  Bito  and  Fortunatus  to  Corinth 
from  Rome  (1  Clem.  Ixiii,  1).  Harnack  finds  in  the  three  men  selected 
to  assist  the  small  congregation  in  the  selection  of  a  bishop  the  anticipa- 
tion of  the  much  later  rule  that  the  consecration  of  a  bishop  required 
the  presence  and  co-operation  of  the  three  neighbouring  bishops.  He  finds 
a  middle  point  in  the  fact  evidenced  by  the  letter  of  Cornehus  of  Rome 
to  Fabius  of  Antioch  (Euseb.  Hist,  Eccl.  VI.,  xliii.  8,  9)  that  by  the  middle 
of  the  third  century  it  was  the  custom  that  bishops  were  consecrated  by 
three  neighbouring  bishops  {Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons  (1895),  pp. 
36  flf.).     This  afterwards  became  the  law  and  is  found  in  canons  of  many 


'    THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  APOSTOLIC  CANONS     179 

presumably  experienced  Christians,  but  not  necessarily  office- 
bearers, they  are  to  select  some  one  (whether  from  their  own 
number  or  from  the  outside  is  not  said)  to  be  their  bishop.  A 
list  of  qualifications  is  given  them  to  direct  their  choice,  from 
which  it  appears  that  character  and  Christian  experience  are 
the  things  really  needful  for  the  office/  A  pastor  or  bishop 
is  to  be  one  whose  character  stands  so  high  that  no  one  may 
be  expected  to  bring  any  charge  of  misconduct  against  him. 
He  is  not  to  be  given  to  drinking,  nor  to  covetousness  nor  to 
foul  Hving.  He  must  not  be  a  respecter  of  persons.  It  is 
better  that  he  should  be  unmarried,  but  if  he  has  a  wife  he  must 
be  a  faithful  husband.  It  is  advisable  that  he  should  be  an 
educated  man  and  able  to  expound  the  Scriptures,  but  that 
is  not  indispensable.  If  he  is  milearned  he  must  at  least  be 
gentle  and  full  of  love  towards  all  persons.  He  has  to  repre- 
sent the  commmiity  to  the  outside  world,  and  must  therefore 
be  a  man  whom  the  heathen  respect.  He  is  to  be  the  leader 
in  public  worship,  and  the  elders  are  to  support  him,  seated  on 
his  right  hand  and  on  his  left.  He  must  be  a  valiant  fighter 
against  sin,  and  the  elders  are  to  aid  him  in  this  duty  also. 
He  is,  under  the  control  of  the  elders,  to  administer  the 
property  of  the  Church,  which  in  these  early  days  consisted 
of  the  gifts  brought  by  the  faithful  to  the  meeting  for  thanks- 
councils  (the  Council  of  Aries  in  its  twentieth  canon  being  the  tirst). 
Hence  comes  the  saying  "  All  Christendom  becomes  presbyterian  on  a 
consecration  day."  It  is  evident  from  the  continual  repetition  of  the 
law  that  the  Churches  found  it  somewhat  difficult  to  enforce  their  regula- 
tion. 

'  The  quahfications  are  divided  into  two  classes  those  indispensable 
and  those  desirable.  "  That  is  if  he  has  a  good  report  among  the  heathen, 
if  he  is  faultless,  if  a  friend  of  the  poor,  if  honourable — no  diunkard  no 
adulterer,  not  covetous  nor  a  slanderer,  nor  partial  or  such  like  "  (i.  10-15). 
These  are  the  necessary  quaUtications.  Then  follow  the  desirable :  "  It 
is  good  if  he  is  immarried  ;  if  not  then  a  man  of  one  wiio, ;  educated,  in 
a  position  to  expound  the  scriptures  ;  but  if  he  is  unlearned,  then  he  must 
be  gentle  and  filled  with  love  to  all,  so  that  a  bishop  should  never  be  as 
one  accused  of  anytliing  by  the  multitude '-  (i.  10-23)  ;  Sources  of  the 
Apostolic  Canons,  pp.  8-10. 


180     THE   MINISTRY  IN   THE   SECOND  CENTUKY 

giving.  They  were  handed  over  to  him,  and  distributed 
under  the  watchful  supervision  of  the  elders. 

Besides  the  pastor  the  congregation  is  required  to  appoint 
at  least  two  elders  or  presbyters.'  They  are  to  be  men  advanced 
in  years  and  presumably  unmarried  (the  meaning  of  the  phrase 
is  somewhat  doubtful).^  They  must  not  be  respectors  of  persons. 
They  are  to  be  ready  to  assist  the  pastor  at  all  times  in  the 
conduct  of  pubhc  worship  and  in  dealing  with  sinners.  They 
are  the  rulers  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word.  They  are  re- 
sponsible for  summoning  the  people  to  public  worship,  and  it  is 
their  place  to  preserve  order  during  Divine  Service.  The  women 
who  visit  the  sick  are  to  report  to  them  and  not  to  the  bishop. 
They  are  to  see  that  the  bishop  distributes  in  a  proper  manner 
the  offerings  of  the  faithful.  They  have  charge  of  the  discipline 
of  the  congregation  including  the  pastor.^ 

Every  church  must  have  at  least  three  deacons,  who  are  to 
be  the  ministers  of  the  people  in  their  private  and  home  life. 
They  are  to  report  on  any  unseemly  conduct  which  may  call 


^  "  Hence  the  presbyters  must  be  already  advanced  in  life,  abstaining 
becomingly  from  communication  with  women,  willingly  sharing  with  the 
brotherhood,  not  having  regard  to  the  person,  companions  in  consecration 
with  the  bishop  (o-v/x/xwTas  tov  iTrio-KOTrov),  and  fighting  on  his  side, 
collecting  the  congregation  together,  kindly  disposed  towards  the  pastor. 
The  elders  on  the  right  should  look  after  the  bishops  at  the  altar,  in 
order  that  they  may  distribute  the  gifts  and  themselves  receive  the 
necessary  contributions  (ottws  TLfiijcrojat  koI  ivTiixr]6w(nv,  cis  o  av  oerj). 
The  elders  on  the  left  shall  look  after  the  congregation  in  order  that  it 
may  be  at  rest  and  without  disturbance,  after  that  it  has  been  first 
proved  in  all  submission.  But  if  one  who  is  admonished  should  answer 
rudely ;  those  at  the  altar  should  unite  and  condemn  such  an  one  to  the 
punishment  deserved  by  a  general  resolution,  so  that  the  others  may  be 
in  awe,  in  order  that  they  (the  elders)  look  not  at  the  person  of  any  one, 
and  that  it  may  not  spread  as  a  oancer  and  be  taken  up  by  every  one  "  (ii.). 

^  The  phi'ase  is  rpoTro)  nvl  aTrexofxeuovs  t^s  tt/dos  ywatKas  o-weAeuo-ews. 

3  The  relation  of  the  elders  to  the  bishops  is  expressed  by  the  word 
Trpovo-^crovTaL ;  this  has  been  translated  in  the  EngUsh  version  "  shall 
assist,"  which  cannot  be  right,  for  the  same  \\ord  is  used  to  express  the 
relation  of  the  elders  to  the  people,  and  it  is  evident  that  the  power  of 
discipline  is  meant  (ii.  19,  23). 


THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  APOSTOLIC  CANONS     181 

for  discipline  at  the  hands  of  the  elders.  They  are  to  be  men 
well  esteemed  in  the  congregation,  faithful  husbands,  with  well- 
behaved  families.'  It  is  their  duty  to  move  among  the  people, 
"  and  carefully  give  heed  to  those  who  walk  disorderly,  warning 
one,  exhorting  another,  threatening  a  third,  but  leaving  scoffers 
entirely  to  themselves."  They  were  to  be  men  of  generous 
disposition,  for  part  of  their  duty  was  to  insist  that  the 
wealthier  members  of  the  Brotherhood,  as  the  congregation  is 
called,  "  open  their  hands  "  to  support  the  poor  and  for  other 
ecclesiastical  needs,  and  example  is  better  than  precept.  In 
short  their  duties,  as  laid  down  in  these  ancient  canons,  are 
almost  identical  with  those  of  the  deacons  in  presbyterian 
churches  now,  both  in  what  they  do  and  in  what  they  are  to 
refrain  from  doing. 

Every  church  was  also  to  have  a  ministry  of  women.  Three 
were  to  be  appointed.  They  are  called  widows,  and  a  curious 
division  of  duties  is  enjoined.^  One  of  them  is  to  act  as  a  combina- 
tion of  nurse  and  Bible-woman,  She  is  to  assist  the  sick  women 
of  the  congregation.  To  this  end  she  "  must  be  ready  for  the 
service,  discreet  and  not  avaricious,  nor  given  to  much  love  of 

'  "  They  shall  be  approved  in  every  service,  with  a  good  testimony 
from  the  congregation,  husbands  of  one  wife,  educating  their  children, 
honourable,  gentle,  quiet,  not  murmuring,  not  double-tongued,  not  quickly 
angry,  not  looking  on  the  person  of  the  rich,  also  not  oppressing  the  poor, 
also  not  given  to  much  wine,  intelligent,  encouraging  well  to  secret  works, 
while  they  compel  those  among  the  brethren  who  have  much  to  open 
their  hands,  also  themselves  generous,  communicative,  honoured  with  all 
honour  and  esteem  and  fear  by  the  congregation,  carefully  giving  heed 
to  those  who  walk  disorderly,  warning  the  one,  exhorting  the  other, 
threatening  a  tliird,  but  leaving  the  scoffers  completely  to  themselves  " 
(iv.).     Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  pp.  17-19. 

^  "  Three  widows  shall  be  appointed,  two  to  persevere  in  prayer  for  all 
those  who  are  in  temptation,  and  for  the  reception  of  revelations  where 
such  are  necessary  ;  but  one  to  assist  the  women  visited  with  sickness. 
She  must  be  ready  for  service,  discreet,  communicating  what  is  necessary 
to  the  elders,  not  avaricious,  not  given  to  much  love  of  Avine,  so  that  she 
may  be  sober  and  capable  of  performing  the  night  ser\'ice3  and  other 
loving  services  if  she  will ;  for  these  are  the  chief  good  treasures  of  the 
Lord"  (v.).     Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  pp.  19-21. 


182     THE  MINISTRY   IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

wine,  so  that  she  may  be  sober  and  capable  of  performing  the 
night  services  and  other  loving  ministry  if  she  will."  The  duty 
of  the  other  two  was  to  "  persevere  in  prayer  for  all  who  are 
in  temptation  "  ;  and  they  were  also  to  pray  for  the  reception 
of  revelations  where  these  were  necessary.  They  took  the  place 
in  the  congregation  of  the  old  prophetic  ministry,  and  were 
among  the  number  of  the  New  Testament  prophetesses. 

\J  There  was  another  official.  The  congregation  is  told  to 
appoint  a  Reader.  He  is  to  be  an  experienced  Christian.  His 
duty  is  to  read  the  Scriptures  during  Divine  Service,  and  it  is 
required  that  he  should  have  a  good  voice  and  a  clear  delivery. 
He  is  told  to  come  early  to  the  church  on  the  Lord's  Day.  He 
is  to  be  able  to  expound  the  Scripture  that  he  has  read.  He  is 
to  remember  that  "  he  fills  the  place  of  an  evangelist."     The 

/^Reader  in  these  ancient  times  did  what  the  pastor  or  bishop 
was  expected  to  do  in  later  times.  There  was  the  more  need 
for  the  office -when  we  remember  that  the  bishop  might  be  an 
unlearned  man,  and  by  unlearned  was  frequently  meant  one 
who  did  not  know  the  alphabet. 

Such  is  a  picture  of  a  small  Christian  Church  in  the  last  decades 
of  the  second  century.  It  may  be  taken  as  the  type  of  hundreds. 
It  is  independent  and  self-governing,  but  it  is  not  isolated.  It 
is  a  brotherhood  (acfeX^oTj;?),  consisting  of  brethren  organized 
under  office-bearers  chosen  by  themselves,  but  it  has  relations 
with,  and  a  knowledge  of,  a  wider  brotherhood  of  which  it  is 
a  minute  part.  Wlien  need  comes  it  can  appeal  for  and  get  help 
in  the  selection  of  its  pastor.  Its  ministry  need  not  be  learned  ; 
Christian  character,  saintly  behaviour,  the  power  to  exhort 
and  teach  which  comes  from  deep  Christian  experience,  are  more 
highly  valued  than  ability  to  read.  The  Brotherhood  has  the 
Wise  Men  whom  St.  Paul  desired  to  see  in  the  Corinthian  Church 
in  its  elders  or  presbyters  who  share  the  responsibilities  of  the 
pastor's  work,  and  in  this  respect  are  his  assistants,  but  whose 
superintendence  and  rule  extends  over  the  pastor  himself  in 
other  respects.     We  see  the  deacons  going  out  and  in  among 


THE   SOURCES   OF  THE  APOSTOLIC  CANONS     183 

the  members  of  the  society,  encouraging,  warning,  rebuking, 
if  need  be,  and  endeavouring  to  excite  to  Christian  liberaUty 
by  precept  and  example.  We  descry  through  the  mists  of  seven- 
teen hundred  years  the  homely  and  simple  ministry  of  women  ; 
on  the  one  hand  an  active  motherly  woman,  able  to  nurse  her 
sick  sisters,  strong  enough  to  endure,  as  women  only  can,  long 
periods  of  night-watching,  giving  wholesome  motherly  advice 
to  the  women  and  girls  of  the  community ;  and  on  the  other 
two  solitary  women,  in  the  weakness  and  loneliness  of  their  sex 
and  of  their  widowhood,  powerful  to  wrestle  with  God  in  prayer, 
and  to  assist  with  their  supplications  the  whole  congregation 
and  the  strong  men  who  are  tempted  and  tried  in  the  daily  battle 
of  life.  The  strong  supporting  the  weak  ;  and  the  weak,  power- 
ful in  prayer,  helping  the  strong ;  the  picture  is  one  which  only 
a  Christian  community  could  show,  and  there  it  often  appeared. 
Early  Christian  literature  abounds  in  references  to  the  prayers 
of  the  widows  of  the  congregation.  They  are  expected  to  bear 
the  whole  burden  of  the  brethren  upon  their  hearts,  and  to  entreat 
the  Lord  in  prayer.  The  prayers  of  believers  are  the  sacrifice 
of  primitive  Christianity,  and  because  the  widows  abound  in 
prayer  they  are  the  altar  of  sacrifice.' 

These  ancient  fragments  of  old  ecclesiastical  canons  are, 
however,  specially  interesting,  because  they  represent  the 
transition  stage  between  the  organization  of  the  churches,  shown 
in  the  Epistle  of  Clement  to  the  Corinthians  or  in  the  Didache,  and 
the  three-fold  ministry  of  the  third  century.     They  do  this  in 


^  Compare  Polycarp,  Epistle  to  the  Philippians,  4 ;  in  the  Canons  of 
Hippolytus  (ix.  59)  widows  are  to  be  highly  honoured  because  of  their 
copiosas  orationes  et  infirmorum  curam.  In  Apostolic  Constitutions,  iii. 
12,  13,  it  is  said  :  "  For  it  becomes  widows  when  they  see  that  one  of  their 
fellow  widows  is  clothed  by  any  one  or  receives  money  or  meat  or  drink 
or  shoes,  at  the  sight  of  the  refreshment  of  their  sister  to  say :  Thou  art 
blessed  O  God,  who  hast  refreshed  my  fellow  A\idow.  Bless  0  Lord,  and 
glorify  him  that  has  bestowed  these  things  upon  her,  and  let  his  good  work 
ascend  in  truth  unto  Thee  and  remember  him  for  good  in  the  day  of  his 
visitation."-     Compare  Apost.  Constit.  iii.  5,  7. 


184     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

two  ways.  The  prophetic  ministry  has  departed,  but  its  mem- 
ories Hnger  in  the  prayers  of  the  widows  for  revelations  and  in 
the  exhortation  to  the  Reader  that  he  holds  the  place  of  an 
evangelist.  For  our  immediate  purpose,  however,  it  is  most 
interesting  to  have  in  the  fragments  an  organization  lying 
between  that  of  a  church  or  congregation,  ruled  by  a  college 
of  presbyter-bishops  as  in  the  Didache,  and  one  where  the  bishop 
or  pastor  is  the  president  of  a  compact  circle  of  elders  and  deacons, 
and  where  these  office-bearers  have  their  fixed  places  under 
their  head.  In  these  fragments  the  bishop  or  pastor  has  neither 
the  power  nor  the  position  he  afterwards  came  to  occupy  almost 
universally  in  the  third  century. 

But  there  is  this  advance  on  the  older  organization.  There  is 
now  one  man  who  has  a  distinct  position  which  he  occupies  by 
himself.  He  is  the  recognized  leader  of  the  congregation  or 
church  in  several  definite  ways.  He  represents  the  congregation 
to  those  outside,  else  why  should  it  be  a  necessary  qualification 
for  office  that  he  is  respected  by  the  heathen  ?  He  leads  the 
congregational  worship  in  the  meeting  for  thanksgiving  at  any 
rate,  and  if  he  is  learned  and  can  expound  the  Scriptures,  pro- 
bably at  the  meeting  for  edification  also.  The  gifts  of  the 
congregation  ate  given  into  his  hands  for  distribution,  and  he 
is  the  almoner.  He  stands  alone  and  separate  from  the  other 
office-bearers  in  all  this.  In  these  respects  also  he  stands  forth 
as  the  representative  of  the  unity  of  the  congregation  or  church. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  has  not  yet  been  placed  in  the  position 
which  the  bishop  or  pastor  afterwards  held.  In  the  Apostolic 
Constitutions  it  is  the  bishop  who  calls  the  congregation  together 
for  worship  ;  here  that  duty  belongs  to  the  elders,  who  also  watch 
over  the  behaviour  of  the  people  while  in  Church.'  In  later 
ecclesiastical  manuals  the  deacons  and  deaconesses  report  to 
the  bishop ;  there  they,  or  at  least  the  deaconesses,  report  to 

^  Apostolic  Constitutions,  ii.  57  ;  cf.  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons, 
ii.  15  :  the  same  word  a-vvadpoi^eiv  being  used  in  both  as  the  technical 
term  to  summon  to  Church. 


THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  APOSTOLIC  CANONS     185 

the  elders,  who  have  the  responsibiUties  for  the  sick  and  infirm 
of  the  congregation,  which  in  later  days  belonged  to  the  bishop.' 
All  these  things  show  that  the  discipline  of  the  congregation 
is  in  the  hands  of  the  elders  exclusively,  and  that  the  bishop 
is  not  the  president  of  their  court.  If  any  doubt  remained  on 
this  head  it  must  vanish  when  we  consider  the  unique  regula- 
tion that  the  bishop  himself  is  under  the  supervision  of  the 
elders  in  one  of  the  most  important  of  his  functions.^  When  he 
acts  as  almoner  they  are  to  see  that  he  acts  rightly,  and,  what 
is  of  the  highest  importance  for  understanding  the  situation, 
the  word  used  to  express  the  control  of  the  elders  over  the 
bishop  is  the  same  word  {irpovoela-OaL),  which  describes  their 
power  of  discipline  over  the  congregation.  The  bishop  has 
emerged  from  the  circle  of  presbyters,  but  he  is  not  their  presi- 
dent ;  and  while  he  is  the  leader  of  the  congregation  in  many 
respects  he  is,  in  one  respect  at  least,  like  the  members  of  the 
congregation,  amenable  to  the  discipline  of  the  elders. 

Probably  had  we  other  relics  of  ecclesiastical  manuals  be- 
longing to  this  transition  period  we  should  find  other  instances 
of  organizations  on  the  road  towards  the  three-fold  ministry, 

^  Apostolic  ConstihUions.  iii.  19  orders  the  deacons  nd  deaconesses : 
"  Tell  your  Bishop  of  all  those  that  are  in  affliction ;  for  you  ought  to 
be  like  his  soul  and  senses."  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  v.  8,  9,  directs 
the  Widows  to  "  communicate  what  is  necessary  to  the  presbyters  or 
elders."  In  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  c.  5,  the  deacons  are  ordered  to 
report  to  the  bishop.  Cf.  Riedel,  Die  Kirchenrechtsquellen  des  Patriarchats 
Alexandrien  (1900),  p.  203. 

2  Apostolic  Constitutions,  ii.  25,  35,  make  it  plain  that  the  bishop  was 
accountable  to  no  one  but  God  in  his  duty  as  almoner.  The  bishop  is 
thus  addressed :  "  Let  him  use  those  tenths  and  first  fruits,  which  are 
given  according  to  the  command  of  God,  as  a  man  of  God ;  as  also  let 
him  dispense  in  a  right  manner  the  free-will  offerings  which  are  brought 
on  account  of  the  poor,  to  the  orphans  .  .  .  as  having  that  God  for  the 
examiner  of  his  accounts  Who  has  committed  the  disposition  to  him" 
(ii.  25).  And  in  the  thirty-fifth  section  the  people  are  enjoined :  "  Thou 
shalt  not  call  the  bishop  to  account  nor  watch  his  administration,  how 
he  does  it,  when  or  to  whom,  or  where,  or  whether  he  does  it  well  or  ill 
or  indifferently  ;  for  he  has  One  Who  will  call  him  to  account,  the  Lord 
God." 


186     THE  MINISTRY   IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

but  travelling  by  different  paths.  We  know  that  the  three- 
fold ministry  grew  more  rapidly  in  some  places  than  in  others, 
and  the  organization  probably  passed  through  several  transition 
stages,  of  which  this  is  one,  before  it  attained  to  maturity. 

Our  third  group  of  writings  are  the  famous  Letters  of  Ignatius 
of  Antioch — a  series  of  documents  which  have  provoked  an 
immense  amount  of  criticism  which  cannot  be  said  to  be  ended. 
Without  entering  into  the  controversy  we  may  accept  the 
results  of  the  scholarly  criticism  of  the  late  Dr.  Lightfoot  in  this 
country,  and  of  Dr.  Zahn  in  Germany,  according  to  which  the 
Seven  Epistles  in  the  shorter  recension  are  genuine  documents. 
These  letters  came  from  the  head  of  the  Christian  community 
in  Antioch  in  Syria.  Ignatius  had  been  seized  in  an  outburst 
of  persecution  and  was  being  dragged  across  Asia  Minor,  a 
prisoner  in  charge  of  a  band  of  Roman  soldiers.  He  wrote  to 
the  Christians  of  Ephesus  that  he  was  on  his  way  from  Syria, 
in  bonds  for  the  sake  of  the  common  Name  and  hope,  and  was 
expecting  to  succeed  in  fighting  with  wild  beasts  at  Rome, 
that  by  so  succeeding  he  might  have  power  to  become  a  disciple.' 
The  journey  was  an  apprenticeship  in  suffering ;  for  the  ten 
soldiers,  who  guarded  him,  treated  him  as  ten  leopards  might 
have  done,  and  only  waxed  worse  when  they  were  kindly  en- 
treated.^ The  churches  of  Asia  Minor  had  sent  him  comforting 
messages  by  special  delegates.     The  letters  are  his  answers.^ 


^  To  the  Ephesians,  1.  ^  To  the  Romans,  5. 

3  The  letters  of  Ignatius  were  generally  known  during  the  later  Middle 
Ages  in  the  form  of  seventeen  epistles,  of  which  fifteen  were  believed  to  come 
from  the  pen  of  Ignatius  while  two  (one  from  the  Virgin  and  another 
from  a  Mary  of  Cassobola)  were  addressed  to  Ignatius.  Renascence 
criticism  disposed  of  the  claims  of  four  of  these  letters.  There  remained 
thirteen,  twelve  from  the  pen  of  Ignatius  and  one  (from  Mary  of  Cassobola) 
addressed  to  him.  This  collection  is  now  known  as  the  Long  Recension, 
and  it  was  this  collection  which  was  the  subject  of  fierce  controversy  in 
the  end  of  the  sixteenth  and  during  the  seventeenth  century.  At  the 
l)asis  of  these  attacks  made  on  the  genuineness  of  these  letters  lay  two 
facts  :  that  Euscbius  knev/  of  seven  letters  only  and  that  these  thirteen 
contained  passages  evidently  unknown  to  Eusebius  or  to  any  of  the  ancients. 


THE   EPISTLES   OF  IGNATIUS  187 

They   exhale   the    fragrance   of   a   saintly   and  impassioned 
Christian  life.    They  dwell  on  the  need  that  the  sin-sick  children 

The  learned  Englishman,  Ussher,  afterwards  archbishop  of  Armagh  and 
primate  of  all  Ireland,  observed  that  the  quotations  made  from  Ignatius 
by  some  English  writers  from  the  thirteenth  century  onwards  corresponded 
with  those  found  in  Eusebius,  Theodoret,  etc.,  and  concluded  that  there 
must  exist  in  England  a  manuscript  which  would  represent  the  Ignatius 
known  to  the  ancients.  After  a  prolonged  search  two  such  manuscripts 
were  brought  to  light,  both  of  them  in  Latin.  They  contained  seven  let- 
ters but  in  a  form  shorter  than  the  generally  received  letters.  Ussher 
accepted  six  of  these  shorter  letters  as  the  genuine  epistles  of  Ignatius 
(he  refused  to  accept  the  letter  to  Polycarp).  His  book  was  pubhshed 
in  1644.  Soon  afterwards  (164G)  Isaac  Voss  pubUshed  six  letters  from  a 
Greek  MS. — his  MS.  did  not  give  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  ;  and  in 
1689  the  full  Greek  text  of  the  seven  letters  was  published  by  Ruinart. 
It  was  generally  admitted  that,  if  any  genuine  letters  of  Ignatius  had  de- 
scended to  the  present  time,  they  were  these  seven  in  the  shorter  form  ; 
but  many  critics  still  refuse  to  admit  the  genuineness  of  any  of  the  letters. 

The  controversy  was  raised  again  in  1845  by  the  publication  of  Cureton's 
Ancient  Syriac  Version  of  the  Epistles  of  S.  Ignatius  to  8.  Polycarp,  the 
Ephcsians  and  the  Romans.  The  author  had  found  two  Syriac  MSS. 
in  the  library  of  the  British  Museum  containing  the  three  epistles  mentioned 
in  his  title  and  in  a  still  shorter  form  than  those  pubhshed  by  Ussher. 
He  maintained  that  these  three  short  letters  were  the  genuine  remains 
of  Ignatius.  He  defended  his  position  in  a  second  work,  Vindiciae  Igna- 
tianae  (1846),  and  in  his  most  complete  treatise,  Corpus  Ignatianum  (1849). 
His  views  at  once  attracted  attention  and  were  very  largely  adopted, 
though  many  distinguished  scholars  still  defended  the  seven  letters,  while 
others  i-efused  to  accept  even  Cureton's  three  in  the  brief  form.  This  con- 
troversy was  almost  ended  by  Zahn,  who,  in  his  Ignatius  von  Antioch  (1873), 
showed  very  successfully  that  Cureton's  three  Syriac  letters  were  epitomes 
of  the  three  in  what  were  called  the  Short  Recension.  This  opinion  was 
supported  by  the  late  Dr.  Lightfoot's  elaborate  work.  Apostolic  Fathers,  part 
II.,  S.  Ignatius,  S.  Polycarp  (1885).  The  result  of  these  two  works  has 
been  that  in  Germany,  France  and  England  the  seven  letters,  in  the  shorter 
form  published  by  Ruinart  in  1689,  are  generally  accepted  as  the  genuine 
remains  of  Ignatius.  Many  critics  still  refuse  to  accept  the  letters  in  any 
form  as  genuine,  but  their  criticism  is  mainly  of  the  subjective  and  un- 
convincing kind.  The  only  writer  whose  book  deserves  serious  con- 
sideration and  who  dissents  from  the  conclusions  of  Zahn  and  Lightfoot 
is  Bruston,  who,  in  his  Ignace  d'Antioche  (1897),  refuses  to  admit  the 
genuineness  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  and  combines  his  critical  opinions 
witli  tlie  theory  that  Ignatius  was  not  the  Bishop  of  Antioch  but  a  deacon 
in  the  Church  there. 

Many  scholars  are  of  the  opinion  that  the  letters  of  Ignatius  were  known 


188     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

of  men  have  for  the  One  great  Physician  of  souls/  The  Christian 
preacher  of  the  (gecorid  century  lives  in  them  still,  embalmed 
there  and  treasured  up  for  a  life  beyond  life.  We  find  in  them 
bursts  of  poetic  fancy :  the  Lord  was  a  Star  which  shone  forth 
in  the  heaven  above  all  stars  ;  and  its  light  was  unutterable  ; 
and  its  strangeness  caused  astonishment ;  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  constellations,  with  the  sun  and  the  moon,  formed  them- 
selves into  a  chorus  about  the  star ;  but  the  Star  itself  far  out- 
shone them  all.^  They  abound  in  simple  but  striking  metaphors, 
such  as  the  lyre  and  its  strings,  the  athlete  and  his  training  ; 
the  chorus  with  its  keynote  ;  the  wheat  ground  in  the  hand- 
mill.^  We  find  quaint  emblems :  "  Ye  are  stones  of  a  temple, 
which  were  prepared  beforehand  for  a  building  of  Grod,  being 
hoisted  up  to  the  heights  through  the  engine  of  Jesus  Christ, 
which  is  the  Cross,  and  using  for  a  rope  the  Holy  Spirit ;  while 
your  faith  is  your  windlass,  and  love  is  the  way  that  leadeth 
up  to  God."  "^  They  show  deep  knowledge  of  the  human  heart : 
"  No  man  professing  faith  sinneth,  and  no  man  possessing  love 
hateth  "  ^ — a  sentence  which  might  have  come  from  Thomas 
a  Kempis.  Sometimes  the  words  seem  insensibly  to  take  the 
form  of  a  prophetic  chant,  and  have  a  rhythmic  cadence  all 


to  Lucian  and  that  he  used  his  knowledge  in  writing  his  story  De  Morte 
Peregrini.  They  think  that  the  imprisonment  of  Peregrinus,  the  visits 
paid  to  him  by  delegates  from  the  Churches  of  Asia  Minor,  and  the  letters 
written  by  him  to  the  Churches  which  were  received  with  reverence,  were 
all  incidents  suggested  by  the  letters  of  Ignatius.  The  idea  seems  to  me 
somewhat  far-fetched ;  the  points  which  Lucian  seizes  and  makes  use  of 
may  easily  have  been  suggested  by  a  general  observation  of  usages  com- 
mon to  early  Christianity  and  need  not  be  attached  to  any  particular 
person  however  famous  ;  but  compare  Lightfoot,  S.  Ignatius,  S.  Polycarp, 
i.  pp.  331  ff. 

'  To  the  Ephesians,  7. 

^  Ibid.  19. 

3  To  the  Ephesians,  4  ;   To  the  Philadelphians,  1  ;    To  Polycarp,  1,  2  ; 
To  the  Romans,  4. 

4  To  the  Ephesians,  9. 

5  Ibid.  14. 


THE  EPISTLES  OF   IGNATIUS  189 

their  own.'  Throughout  there  is  that  taste  of  Oriental  ex- 
travagance which  makes  them  so  natural.^ 

The  letters  breathe  the  storm  and  strain  of  a  time  of  perse- 
cution. The  rallying  cry  which  rolls  from  the  first  to  the  last 
is  union  !  Keep  united  !  Close  the  ranks  !  Intimate  union 
with  Christ ;  that  is  the  main  thing,  and  that  which  comes 
first.  This  is  how  he  puts  it.  "  For  being  counted  worthy  to 
bear  a  most  godly  name,  in  these  bonds,  which  I  carry  about, 
I  sing  the  praise  of  the  churches  ;  and  I  pray  that  there  may  be 
in  them  union  of  the  flesh  and  of  the  Spirit  which  are  Jesus 
Christ's,  our  never-failing  life — an  union  of  faith  and  of  love 
which  is  preferred  before  all  things,  and — what  is  more  than 
all — an  union  with  Jesus  and  with  the  Father,  in  whom,  if  we 
patiently  endure  all  the  despite  of  the  prince  of  this  world  and 
escape  therefrom,  we  shall  attain  unto  God."  ^ 

Varying  pictures  of  the  Christian  Churches  rise  in  his  imagina- 
tion. Now  they  are  ships  driven  and  tossed  in  the  storm  of 
persecution  ;  there  must  be  a  strong  man  at  the  helm  and 
discipline  in  the  crew  ;  they  need  a  favouring  wind  and  a  shelter- 
ing haven.'^  Or  they  are  so  many  households  of  God  :  the 
office-bearers  are  the  upper  servants  set  there  by  the  Master 
to  rule,  and  the  other  members  obey  the  Master  Himself  when 
they  are  submissive  to  those  whom  He  has  set  over  them.^ 

^  Compare  especially  the  Epistle  to  the  Philaddphians,  7  : — 

XwpiS    TOV    eTTtCTKOTTOU    fXTjBkv    7rOUlT€' 

Tr]v  aapKa  v/xwv  ws  vaoi'  0eou  rTqp(.iTV 

Tyjv  tvojcnv  dyaTrarf 

Tov's  //.cptcr/xovs  t^euycTC 

Mt^T^rai  ycvicrde  'Irjcrov  Xpicrrou, 

'Os  Koi  avTos  ToD  Harpos   avTOv. 
Ignatius  had  evidently  visited  Philadelphia  and  had  addressed  the  brethren 
there,  and  in  his  address  he  had  felt  the  prophetic  afflatus,  had  interrupted 
himself  with  a  loud  cry,  and  these  sentences  were  part  of  what  he  had 
said.     They  are  an  example  of  the  prophetic  utterances. 

^  As  where  he  says  : — "  These  men  ye  ought  to  shun  as  wild  beasts 
for  they  are  mad  dogs,  biting  by  stealth,"  To  the  Ephesians,  7. 

3  To  the  Magnesians,  1. 

4  To  Polycarp,  2.  5  To  the  Ephesians,  6. 


190     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY 

Or  they  are  disciple  companies,  cherishing  an  imitation  of 
Christ,  not  in  the  sohtary  fashion  of  Thomas  a  Kempis,  but  in 
companionship.  The  pastor  represents  Jesus,  the  elders  are 
His  apostles,'  and  the  deacons  and  the  faithful  those  who  fol- 
lowed Him  in  Galilee — and  all,  pastor  and  elders  and  people, 
look  for  the  footprints  the  Master  has  left,  and  try  to  set  their 
steps  where  He  trod.  Perhaps  this  picture  of  a  disciple  company 
is  his  favourite  one.  It  has  been  a  thought  tenderly  cherished 
through  the  centuries,  and  has  often  been  set  forth  with  a  certain 
quaint  realism.  Columba  and  twelve  companions  came  from 
Ireland  to  lona.  Columbanus  with  twelve  companions  appeared 
among  the  Franks  and  the  Burgundians  to  preach  the  Gospel. 
Bernard  and  twelve  companions  left  Citeaux  to  found  his  new 
dwelling  at  Clairvaux.  In  each  case  the  chronicler  lovingly 
adds  :  "  a  disciple  company." 

We  miss  the  main  thought  in  Ignatius  if  we  neglect  to  see  that 
the  unity  which  is  his  passion  is  primarily  and  fundamentally 
something  spiritual  and  mystical.  The  Person  of  Christ  is  the 
centre  round  which  the  Church  crystalhzes.  By  His  death 
on  the  Cross  and  by  His  Resurrection  our  Lord  has  elevated 
a  standard  round  which  His  troops  of  behevers  can  rally 
and  form  a  discipUned  army.^  This  sacred  mystical  attraction 
is  the  inward  essence  and  source  of  that  union  which  he  has 
always  in  view.  So  strong  is  it  that  all  believers  may  be  said 
to  have  one  mind,  a  godly  concord  and  one  spirit  of  perseverance.^ 
The  unity  which  he  insists  upon  is  first  of  all  a  union  with  Christ 
Jesus,  and  then,  and  arising  from  that,  a  common  religious 

^  To  the  Magnesians,  6  ;   To  the  Trallians,  2,  3  ;   To  the  Smyrneans,  8. 

2  To  the  Smyrneans,  1  : — "  Truly  nailed  up  in  the  flesh  for  our  sakes 
under  Pontius  Pilate  and  Herod  the  Tetrarch  .  .  .  that  He  might  set  up 
a  standard  unto  all  ages  through  His  resurrection,  for  His  saints,  whether 
among  Jews  or  among  Gentiles,  in  one  body  of  His  Church." 

3  To  the  Magnesians,  7,  15  : — "  But  let  there  be  one  prayer  in  common, 
one  supplication,  one  mind  (vovs),  one  hope,  in  love  and  in  joy  unblamable 
which  is  in  Jesus  Christ.  .  .  .  Fare  ye  well  -n  godly  concord,  and  possess 
ye  a  stedfast  spirit  which  is  in  Jesus  Christ." 


THE  EPISTLES  OF   IGNATIUS  191 

belief  and  a  common  affection  diffused  throughout  all  believers 
who  ought  to  live  in  a  harmony  of  love.  The  imity  Ignatius 
yearns  after  is  first  of  all  a  unity  of  faith  and  love/ 

But  this  unseen  mystical  unity  ought  to  make  itself  manifest 
according  to  the  ordinances  of  Jesus  and  of  His  apostles.  It 
can  make  itself  seen  in  the  best  way  in  the  attachment  of  be- 
lievers to  the  visible  local  church  which  is  the  assembly  of  be- 
lievers for  prayer,  exhortation,  and  for  the  celebration  of  the 
Holy  Supper  and  for  baptism.  Those  who  are  truly  the  Lord's, 
and  who  share  in  the  invisible  mystical  union,  cannot  fail  to 
assemble  together  with  one  heart  and  mind,  nor  to  unite  in  one 
common  prayer.  Ignatius  addresses  himself  more  than  once 
to  men  who  seem  to  think  that  the  Christian  life  can  be  lived 
apart  from  the  Christian  visible  fellowship ;  ^  and  he  declares 
that  apart  from  the  office-bearers  there  is  not  even  the  name 
of  a  Church. 3  Christians  ought  to  manifest  this  inward  unity 
which  they  have  in  an  external  unity,  which  can  best  show 
itself  in  the  manifestation  of  mutual  respect  for  each  other, 
in  reverencing  each  other  and  in  loving  one  another  in  Jesus 
Christ.^ 

This  submission  which  is  due  by  all  believers  to  each  other 
is  specially  due  to  those  who  have  been  placed  at  the  head 
of  the  Christian  commimities,  and  who  are  there  to  be  examples 
to  their  flocks.^    Submission  to  one  another  and  to  the  oflice- 

^  "  Run  in  harmony  \vith  the  mind  of  God  "  {Ephesiam,  3) ;  "  In  your 
concord  and  harmonious  love  Jesus  Christ  is  sung  ;  do  ye,  each  and  all  of 
you,  form  yourselves  into  a  chorus,  that  being  harmonious  in  concord 
and  taking  the  key-note  of  God  ye  may  in  union  sing  with  one  voice 
through  Jesus  Christ  to  our  Father  "  {Ephesians,  4) ;  cf.  To  the  Magne- 
sians,  1. 

*  To  the  Ephesians,  5,  13,  20  ;   To  the  Magnesians,  7. 

3  To  the  TralUans,  3. 

4  "  Therefore  do  ye  all  study  conformity  to  God,  and  pay  reverence 
one  to  another  "  {Maxjncsians,  6).  "  Attempt  not  to  think  anything  right 
for  yourselves  apart  from  others  "  {Magnesians,  7).  "  Be  obedient  to 
the  bishop  and  to  one  another  "  {Magnesians,  13). 

5  "  Let  there  be  nothing  among  you  which  shall  have  power  to  divide 
you,  but  be  ye  united  with  the  bishop  and  with  them  that  preside  over 


192     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

bearers —  a  submission  founded  on  love — is  the  outward  mani- 
festation of  the  inward  mystical  union  which  all  true  believers 
have  with  Christ,  who  is  the  true  centre  of  the  union.  For 
Ignatius  never  loses  sight  of  the  mystical  union  fed  by  faith 
and  love.^ 

The  real  centre  of  this  unity  is  God  and  Christ  Who  is  God ; 
the  real  oversight  lies  with  Him.  In  his  fervent  Oriental  way 
which  expresses  abstract  thoughts  in  defective,  though  pic- 
turesque, material  and  external  representations,  Ignatius  sees 
this  Divine  and  invisible  unity  manifest  in  the  bishop  (or  in 
whatever  may  be  the  visible  centre  of  the  ecclesiastical  rule).^ 
For  it  must  not  be  forgotten  in  attempting  to  interpret  the 
thoughts  of  Ignatius  that  he  belonged  to  what  has  been  called 
the  "  enthusiastic  "  age  of  the  Church,  and  that  he  shared  in 
an  exalted  degree  in  the  spirit  of  his  times.  He  claimed  to  be 
a  prophet  and  to  possess  the  prophetic  gift.  "  I  am  in  bonds," 
he  says,  "  and  can  comprehend  heavenly  things  and  the  arrays 
of  angels  and  the  musterings  of  principalities,  things  visible 
and  invisible."  ^  He  describes  how,  when  he  was  preaching 
at  Philadelphia,  the  prophetic  afflatus  suddenly  possessed 
him,  and  he  felt  compelled  to  cry  out  "  with  a  loud  voice,  with 
God's  own  voice.  Give  ye  heed  to  the  bishop  and  the  session 
and  the  deacons."  His  hearers  thought  that  this  had  been  a 
studied  reference  to  persons  accused  of  causing  division  in  the 
Church,  but  Ignatius  assured  them  that  was  not  so.  The 
Divine  afflatus  had  possession  of  him,  and  it  made  him  cry  out : 

you  as  an  exauiiile  and  a  lesson  of  incorruptibility  "  (Magnesians,  6). 
The  office  bearers  in  this  sentence  are  called  7rpoKa^r;/x€vot,  which  may 
be  compared  with  the  Ttpo'i<ndjjLf.voi.  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  and 
to  the  Thessalonians. 

'  He  calls  a  church  to  iroXv^vTaKTOv  tijs  Kara  0eov  dyaTnjs  {Mag- 
nesians,  1). 

^  "  Give  place  to  him  (the  bishop)  as  to  one  prudent  in  God ;  yet  not 
to  him,  but  to  the  Father  of  Jesus  Christ,  even  to  the  Bishop  of  all.  .  .  . 
For  a  man  doth  not  so  much  deceive  this  bishop  who  is  seen,  as  cheat 
the  other  Who  is  invisible  "  {Magnesians,  3). 

3  To  the  Trallians,  5. 


THE  EPISTLES   OF  IGNATIUS  193 

"  Do  nothing  without  the  bishop  ;  keep  your  flesh  as  a  temple 
of  God  ;  cherish  union  ;  shun  divisions  ;  be  imitators  of  Jesus 
Christ,  as  He  Himself  also  was  of  His  Father."  ^  With  the 
prophetic  eye  he  saw  the  invisible  and  mystical  unity  which 
lay  hidden  within  the  actual  visible  Christian  community,  and 
every  little  local  church  was  a  symbol  of  what  existed  in  the 
Heavenly  Places  where  God  was  the  centre  and  source  of  unity. 
It  is  from  this  mystical  standpoint  that  we  must  view  the  im- 
passioned exhortations  to  obey  the  office-bearers,^  remembering 
also  that  obedience  to  the  rulers  in  the  Church  is  only  the  super- 
lative of  the  submission  of  love  which  all  Christians  owe  to  one 
another. 

When  due  allowance  is  made  for  the  exaltation  of  the  writer, 
and  for  the  Oriental  extravagance  of  language  natural  to  a 
Syrian,  the  exhortations  of  Ignatius  do  not  differ  so  widely 
from  the  calm  injunctions  issued  in  the  measured  language  of 
Rome  to  the  church  of  Corinth  which  we  find  in  the  Epistle  of 
Clement :  "  Let  us  mark  the  soldiers  that  are  enlisted  under 
our  rulers,  how  exactly,  how  readily,  how  submissively,  they 
execute  the  orders  given  them.     A.11  are  not  prefects,  nor  com- 

^  To  the  Philadelphians,  7. 

*  "  The  bishops  established  in  the  furthest  parts  of  the  world  are  in 
the  counsels  of  Jesus  Christ "  (Ephesians,  3).  "  Every  one  whom  the 
Master  of  the  House  sendeth  to  govern  His  own  household  we  ought  to 
receive,  as  Him  that  sent  him.  Clearly  therefore  we  ought  to  regard  the 
bishop  as  the  Lord  Himself  "  (Ephesians,  6).  Those  who  "  obey  the 
bishop  as  Jesus  Christ "  live  a  life  after  Christ "  {Trallians,  2).  "  It  is 
good  to  know  God  and  the  bishop  ;  he  that  honoureth  the  bishop  is 
honoured  of  God  ;  he  that  doeth  anything  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
bishop  serveth  the  devil  "  (.S'w?/rHea«,9,  9).  To  obey  the  bishop  is  to  obey 
"  not  him,  but  the  Father  of  Jesus  Christ,  even  the  Bishop  of  all,"  while 
to  practise  hypocrisy  towards  the  bishop  is  "  not  to  deceive  the  visible 
one,  so  much  as  to  cheat  the  One  who  is  invisible  "  {Magnesians,  3).  "  As 
many  as  are  of  God  and  of  Jesus  Christ,  are  with  the  bishop  "  {Phila- 
delphians, 3).  Compare  Lightfoot,  Apostolic,  Fathers,  S.  Ignatius,  S. 
Polycarp,  i.  375  f.  ;  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  (1881), 
6th  ed.  pp.  236,  237),  for  a  complete  list  of  passages.  Almost  equally 
strong  language  about  obedience  to  elders  or  presbyters  and  deacons  will 
be  found  on  the  same  pages. 

CM.  13 


194     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY 

manders  of  thousands,  nor  of  hundreds,  nor  of  fifties,  and  so 
forth  ;  but  each  man  in  his  own  rank  executeth  the  orders  given 
by  the  prince  and  the  government."  ^ 

,  It  is  also  to  be  remembered  that  Ignatius  is  writing  to  churches 
in  Asia  Minor,  exposed  to  the  temptations  to  division  caused 
by  the  presence  of  men  teaching  the  separative  doctrines  of  a 
Judaising  Christianity  and  of  Doketism.  The  epistles  them- 
selves afford  abundant  evidence  that  these  sources  of  division 
existed  and  had  proved  strong  temptations  in  the  communities 
to  which  he  was  writing.^  His  passionate  anxiety  was  that  each 
local  church  should  present  an  unbroken  front  and  manifest 
a  complete  unity.  The  simple  means  which  he  believed  would 
effect  this  was  that  all  Christians  should  rally  round  the  office- 
bearers who  were  at  the  head  of  the  little  Christian  societies. 
Most,  though  not  all,  of  the  churches  he  addressed  had  the 
three-fold  ministry  in  some  form  or  other,  and  he  enforced 
obedience  to  that  form  of  ecclesiastical  rule.  "  There  is  no 
indication  that  he  is  upholding  the  episcopal  against  any  other 
form  of  Church  government,  as  for  instance  the  presbyteral 
(i.e.  the  government  by  a  college  of  presbyters  without  a  presi- 
dent). The  alternative  which  he  contemplates  is  lawless  iso- 
lation and  self-will.  No  definite  theory  is  propounded  as  to 
the  principle  on  which  the  episcopate  claims  allegiance.  It 
is  as  the  recognized  authority  of  the  churches  which  the  writer 
addresses,  that  he  maintains  it.  Almost  simultaneously  with 
Ignatius,  Polycarp  addresses  the  PhiHppian  Church,  which 
appears  not  yet  to  have  had  a  bishop,  requiring  its  submission 

^  Clement,  1  Epistle  xxxvii. 

2  "  But  I  have  learned  that  certain  persons  passed  through  you  from 
yonder,  bringing  evil  doctrine  "  (E})hcsiar}s,  9) ;  "  It  is  better  to  keep 
silence  and  to  be,  than  to  talk  and  be  not "  {Ephesians,  15).  "  It  is  mon- 
strous to  talk  of  Jesus  Clirist  and  to  practise  Judaism.  ...  I  would  have 
you  be  on  guard  betimes,  that  ye  fall  not  into  the  snares  of  vain  doctrines  "- 
(Magnesians,  10-11);  compare  the  Epistle  to  the  Trallians,  6-11,  where 
the  brethren  are  warned  against  Doketism  ;  the  Epistle  to  the  Philadd- 
phians,  6,  where  the  warning  is  against  Judaism ;  and  the  Epistle  to  the 
Smyrneans,  5-7,  where  the  error  is  Doketism. 


THE  EPISTLES   OF  IGNATIUS  195 

'  to  the  presbyters  and  deacons.'  '  If  Ignatius  had  been  writing 
to  this  church,  he  would  doubtless  have  done  the  same.  As 
it  is,  he  is  deahng  with  communities  where  episcopacy  (the  three- 
fold ministry)  had  been  already  matured,  and  therefore  he 
demands  obedience  to  their  bishop."  *  He  makes  no  attempt 
certainly  when  writing  to  the  Roman  Church,  which  was  still 
under  the  government  of  a  college  of  presbyter-bishops  without 
a  president,  to  insist  that  the  three- fold  ministry  is  an  essential 
thing  to  the  well-being  of  a  Christian  community.^  What  is 
more,  he  evidently  regards  union  with  the  college  of  elders 
as  the  same  thing  as  union  with  the  bishop ;  for  he  invites  the 
malcontents  at  Philadelphia,  who  had  repented,  to  return  "  to 
the  unity  of  God  and  of  the  council  of  the  bishop."  ** 

We  can  scarcely  look  for  a  calm  statement  about  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  Christian  churches  in  letters  of  this  kind.  They 
were  the  impassioned  outpourings  of  a  man  on  his  way  to  death  ; 
full  of  fears,  not  for  himself,  but  for  the  brethren  he  was  leaving 
behind  in  a  persecuting  world.  It  is  pathetic  to  see  the  fiery, 
impassioned  words  of  the  martyr  used  as  missiles  by  some  reck- 
less preacher  of  episcopal  supremacy,  or  subjected  to  the  scalpel 
of  a  cold-blooded  critic,  neither  of  whom  seem  to  recognize 
the  Oriental  extravagance  of  language  which  makes  them  so 
natural.  Yet  the  letters  do  give  us  a  good  deal  of  information 
about  our  subject. 

Ignatius  insists  that  the  unity  of  the  society  has  for  its  centre 
and  source  of  strength  the  supremacy  of  the  pastor,  who  is 
always  called  the  bishop.     His  writings  are  a  proof  that  thei 
three -fold  ministry  in  some  form  or  other  did  exist,  early  in  the  I 
second  century,  in  some  parts  of  the  Church  though  not  in  others.  I 

'  Compare  Reville,  Les  Origines  de  V E piscopat  (1894),  p.  497  f. 
Lightfoot,  8.  Ignatnis,  S.  Polycarp,  i.  382. 

3  The  three-fold  ministry  developed  much  more  slowly  in  Rome  than 
in  Asia  Minor.  Compare  Lightfoot.  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the 
Philippians  (1881),  6th  ed.  p.  217  ff.  ;  Reville,  Les  Origines  de  VEpiscopcU 
(1894),  p.  420  ff. 

4  Epistle  to  the  Philadelphians,  8. 


196      THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY 

But  they  are  not  to  be  taken  as  proof  that  the  Ignatian  con- 
ception of  what  the  three-fold  ministry  ought  to  be  existed 
in  any  part  of  the  Church  whatever.' 

/  According  to  the  conception  of  Ignatius,  every  Christian 
community  ought  to  have  at  its  head  a  bishop,  a  presbyterium 
or  session  of  elders,  and  a  body  of  deacons.     These  constitute 

\its  office-bearers  to  whom,  jointly  and  severally,  obedience  is 
due.  Ignatius  regards  these  three  elements  as  going  together 
to  form  one  whole.  He  mentions  the  three  classes  of  officials 
together  twelve  times  in  his  seven  epistles,  and  in  ten  out  of  the 
twelve  they  form  an  inseparable  unity — presumably  they  do  so 
also  in  the  remaining  two — but  that  is  not  evident  from  the 
passages  themselves.^  There  is  not  a  trace  of  sacerdotalism 
in  the  sense  that  the  Christian  ministry  is  a  special  priesthood 
set  apart  to  offer  a  special  sacrifice  ;  there  is  a  great  deal  about 
the  sacredness  of  order,  but  not  a  word  about  the  sanctity  of 
orders.  Ignatius  only  once  refers  to  priests  and  high  priests, 
and  he  does  so  in  the  thoroughly  evangelical  fashion  of  con- 
trasting the  imperfect  Old  Testament  priesthood  with  the 
perfect  priesthood  of  the  Redeemer.^  The  bishop  is  not  an 
autocrat.     There  is  a  "  council  of  the  bishop,"  which  includes 


^  In  some  form  or  other  or  in  some  stage  of  its  growth.  Lightfoot  has 
drawn  a  distinction  between  chief  over  the  presbyters  and  chief  of  the 
presbyters,  and  the  second  phrase,  he  says,  suits  very  well  the  beginning 
of  the  Epistle  of  Polycarp: — "  Polycarp  and  the  presbytei's  that  are  with 
him."  Then  there  is  the  form  given  in  the  Sotirccs  of  the  Apostolic  Canons, 
of.  above  pp.  183  f. 

2  To  the  Magnesians,  2,  6,  13  ;  To  the  Trallians,  7  ;  To  the  Philadel- 
phicms,  ])reface,  4,  7  ;  To  the  Smyrneans,  8,  12 ;  To  Polycarp,  6  ;  To 
the  Trallians,  2 ;  To  the  Philadelphians,  10.  Compare  Reville,  Les 
Origines  de  V Episcopal  (1894),  p.  496  : — L'exaltation  du  pouvoir  episcopal 
qui  se  donne  libre  cours  a  travers  les  Epitrcs  d'Ignace  fait  trop  souvent 
perdre  de  vue  aux  commenteurs  cette  intirae  association  de  I'autorite 
presbyterale  et  de  I'autorite  episcopale,  qu'un  examen  plus  attentif  degage 
tres  clairement." 

3  To  the  Philadelphians,  8,  9.  Conijiare  Lightfoot,  Apostolic  Fathers, 
8.  Ignatius,  S.  Polycarp  (1885),  i.  381.  382  ;  ii.  274,  275.  Zahn,  Ignaiii 
et  Polycarpi  Epistulae  (1876),  p.  79. 


THE  EPISTLES   OF   IGNATIUS  197 

the  bishop  himself/  The  people  are  told  to  obey  all  the  office- 
bearers, bishops,  elders  and  deacons."  The  ruling  body  is  a 
court  in  which  the  bishop  sits  as  chairman  surrounded  by  his 
council  or  session  of  elders ;  and  the  one  is  helpless  without  the 
other,  for  if  the  bishop  is  the  lyre  the  elders  are  the  chords,  and 
both  are  needed  to  produce  melody.^  There  is  no  apostohc 
succession  in  any  form  whatsoever  ;  even  in  the  poetic  conception 
of  the  disciple  company  it  is  the  elders  who  represent  the  apostles/ 
Lastly,  there  is  no  trace  of  diocesan  rule.  We  undoubtedly 
find  the  phrase  toj/  eTna-Koirov  2u|o/a? ;  but  as  Lightfoot 
and  Zahn,  to  say  nothing  of  others,  have  pointed  out,  it  must 
be  translated  "  the  bishop  from  Syria."  A  bishop  of  Syria 
would  have  been  an  anachronism  in  the  fourth  century,  and  is 

'  To  the  Philadelphians,  8.  Compare  Lightfoot,  *S',  Ignatiiis,  i.  380  ;  ii. 
209. 

^  Obey  the  bishop  : — Epliesians,  G  ;  Trctllians,  2  ;  iSmyrneans,  8,  9  ; 
Magnesians,  3,  4: ;  Polycarp,  i,  6  ;  Philadelphians,  7.  Obey  the  elders  :  — 
Ephesians,  2,  20  ;  Magnesians,  2,  7  ;  Trallians,  13.  Obey  he  deacons  : 
Polycarp,  6,  ;  Magnesians,  6  ;  Trallians,  3  ;  Philadelphians,  7  ;  ISmyr- 
neans,  8. 

3  To  the  Ephesians,  4. 

4  "  It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  though  the  foi*m  of  government  in  these 
Asian  Churches  is  in  some  sense  monarchical,  yet  it  is  very  far  from  being 
autocratic.  We  have  already  seen  that  in  one  passage  the  writer  in  the 
term  '  council  of  the  bishop  '  includes  the  bishoj)  himself  as  well  as  his 
presbyters.  This  expression  tells  its  own  tale.  Elsewhere  submission  is 
required  to  the  presbyters  as  well  as  to  the  bishop.  Nay  sometimes  the 
writer  enjoins  obedience  to  the  deacons  as  well  as  to  the  bishop  and  to  the 
presbyters.  The  '  presbytery  '  is  a  '  worthy  spiritual  coronal '  {d^toTrXoKov 
TTvevfiaTiKov  a-T€(f)a.vov)  round  the  bishoj)  {Magn.  13).  It  is  the  duty 
of  every  one,  but  especially  of  the  presbyters  '  to  refresh  the  bishop  unto 
the  honour  of  the  Father  and  of  Jesus  Christ  and  of  the  apostles  '  {Trail. 
12).  They  stand  in  the  same  relation  to  him  '  as  the  chords  to  the  lyre  ' 
(Ephes.  4).  If  obedience  is  due  to  the  bishop  as  to  the  grace  of  God,  it 
is  due  to  the  presbytery  as  to  the  law  of  Jesus  Christ  {Magn.  2).  If  the 
bishop  ocupies  the  place  of  God  or  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  presbyters  are  as 
the  Apostles,  as  ths  council  of  God  {Magn.  6 ;  Trail.  2,  3  ;  :S7nyr.  8). 
This  last  comparison  alone  would  show  how  widely  the  idea  of  the  episco- 
pate differed  from  the  later  conception,  when  it  had  been  formulated  in 
the  doctrine  of  the  Apostolic  succession.  The  presbyters,  not  the  bishops, 
are  here  the  successors  of  the  apostles."  Lightfoot,  aS'.  Ignatius,  i.  pp. 
382,  383. 


198     THE   MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY 

much  more  so  in  the  second.'  It  is  unquestionable  that  tha 
bishop  is  made  the  centre  of  everything  in  the  Church  or  con- 
Q  gregation.  "  It  is  not  permitted  without  the  bishop  either  to 
baptize  or  to  hold  a  love  feast,"  ^  and  the  love  feast  must  include 
^  the  Holy  Supper.  It  is  even  declared  that  when  men  and  women 
marry  they  should  unite  themselves  with  the  consent  of  the 
bishop,  that  the  marriage  should  be  after  the  Lord  and  not  after 
concupiscence.^  But  this  only  means  that  in  such  a  solemn 
action  as  matrimony  the  blessing  of  the  Church  should  be  joined 
to  the  civil  contract. 

But  if  there  be  no  sacerdotalism,  no  apostolic  succession, 
no  one-man  rule,  and  no  diocese  ;  if  every  Christian  community 
is  to  be  organized  under  a  leader,  who  is  called  a  bishop  and  some- 
times a  pastor,  who  presides  over  a  court  of  elders,'*  and  has 
under  him  a  body  of  deacons ;  further,  if,  as  the  Sources  of 
the  Apostolic  Canons  inform  us,  every  small  Christian  com- 
munity, even  when  consisting  of  fewer  than  twelve  families, 
is  to  have  its  bishop,  its  elders  and  its  deacons  ;  if  nothing 
is  to  be  done  without  the  consent  of  the  pastor  or  bishop,  neither 
sacrament  nor  love-feast,  nor  anything  congregational — then 
while  the  resemblance  to  modern  episcopacy,  with  its  diocesan 
system,  is  but  small,  there  is  a  very  great  amount  of  resemblance 
to  that  form  of  ecclesiastical  organization  which  re-emerged 
at  the  Reformation  and  which  is  commonly  called  the  presby- 
terian,  though  it  might  be  more  appropriately  named  the  con- 
ciliar  system  of  Church  government. 

A  more  minute  examination  of  the  letters  reveals  some  details 


*  Lightfoot,  S.  Ignatms,  i.  383  ;  ii.  201,  202  ;  Zahn,  Ignatii  Epislulae, 
p.  69  n. ;    and  his  Ignatius  von  Antioch,  p.  308. 

*  To  the  Sviyrneans,  8. 

3  To  Polycarp,  5. 

4  The  TrpeafivTcpiov  or  court  of  elders,  i.e.  kirk-session,  is  mentioned 
frequently  by  Ignatius  :—To  the  Efhesians,  2,  4,  20  ;  To  the  Magnesians, 
2,  13  ;  To  the  Trallians,  2,  7,  13  ;  To  the  Philadelphians,  4,  7  ;  To  the 
Smyrneans,  8,  12.  It  is  called  the  "  council  of  God  "  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
TraUians,  3  {aweSpiov  6eov). 


THE  EPISTLES  OF  IGNATIUS  199 

of  the  organization  of  the  churches  which  were  famiUar  to  Ig- 
natius. 

For  one  thing,  it  seems  clear  that  whatever  the  authority 
of  the  bishop  may  have  been,  it  did  not  extend  beyond  his  own 
church  or  congregation.  The  corporate  unity  of  the  Churches  of 
Christ  was  still  a  sentiment,  strongly  felt  no  doubt,  but  not  yet 
expressed  in  any  kind  of  pohty.  Ignatius  did  not  write  as  a 
bishop  of  the  Catholic  Church  ;  he  says  expressly  that  he  was 
no  apostle.^  He  wrote  as  a  confessor  of  Christ  to  brethren 
who  might  soon  be  required  to  confess  Christ  in  the  same  way 
of  threatened  martyrdom.  Nor  does  Polycarp  claim  to  write 
as  a  superior  to  the  Phihppians.  He  wrote  because  he  had  been 
asked  for  advice.^  The  various  churches  were  still  independent 
units  in  fraternal  intercourse  with  each  other,  but  without  any 
signs  of  inter-congregational  jurisdiction,  t/ 

The  Epistle  to  Polycarp  show  what  Ignatius  beUeved  to  be  the 
duties  of  a  bishop  within  his  own  community.  He  was  the 
administrator  of  the  finances  of  the  Church  ;  to  him  the  widows 
and  the  poor  of  the  congregation  had  to  look  for  their  support,  and 
the  funds  to  buy  the  manumission  of  slaves  were  in  his  hands  ;  ^ 
he  had  the  moral  oversight  of  the  whole  congregation,  and  was 
therefore  the  president  of  the  court  of  discipline ;  *  he  had  the 
right  to  call,  and  presumably  to  preside  over,  the  congregational 
meetings  ;  ^  he  had  the  sole  regulation  of  the  sacraments  of 

'  "  I  did  not  think  myself  competent  for  this  (writing  more  sharply), 
that  being  a  convict  I  should  order  you  as  though  I  were  an  apostle" 
{To  the  Trallians,  3).  Throughout  the  letters  there  are  constant  references 
to  his  impending  martyrdom. 

*  Epistle  of  Polycarp  to  the  Philipinans,  3. 

5  To  Polycarp,  4.  *  To  Polycarp,  3,  5. 

5  To  Polycarp,  4 ;  Ignatius  evidently  thought  that  Polycarp  did  not 
hold  congregational  meetings  often  enough : — "  Let  the  meetings  be  held 
more  frequently."  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  all  the  duties  which 
Ignatius  supposes  to  belong  to  the  bishops  in  the  Church  at  Smyrna  are 
supposed  by  Polycarp  to  belong  to  the  elders  in  the  Church  at  Philippi, 
mth  the  exception  of  presiding  at  pubUc  worship,  which  is  not  mentioned  ; 
Polycarp,  Epistle  to  the  Philippians,  6-12! 


200     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY 

Baptism  and  of  tlie  Holy  Supper  and  of  everything  congrega- 
tional.' But  large  as  were  the  bishop's  powers,  he  had  to  exer- 
cise them  under  serious  limitations.  There  is  not  a  hint  that 
the  bishop  can  by  himself,  or  even  in  conjunction  with  his 
session  or  elders,  excommunicate  an  offender.  The  power  which 
Ignatius  urges  Polycarp  to  use  is  only  that  of  moral  suasion.^ 
It  is  more  than  probable  that  the  final  power  in  all  cases  of 
discipline  lay  with  the  congregational  meeting,  as  was  the  case 
in  Corinth  in  the  time  of  St.  Paul.  It  is  the  congregation  who 
are  warned  against  false  teachers  and  evil-minded  persons,  and 
they  are  directed  to  act  in  certain  ways  with  regard  to  them.^ 
The  passages,  however,  do  not  warrant  us  in  drawing  any  dis- 
tinct conclusion.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  clear  that  the  con- 
gregational meetings  had  powers.  It  was  they  who  appointed 
delegates  and  messengers.  The  Christians  at  Smyrna  are  asked 
directly  to  send  a  delegate  into  Syria,  whereas  the  bishop  is 
only  asked  to  convene  a  meeting  of  the  congregation  in  order 
that  the  messenger  may  be  appointed  ;  and  elsewhere  it  is 
made  plain  that  this  power  belonged  to  the  whole  Church, 
who  could  order  on  a  mission  their  bishops  as  well  as  their  elders 
or  their  deacons."* 

Readers  who  know  something  about  the  work  of  Church 
extension  at  home  and  on  the  mission  field,  may  wonder  how 
it  was  possible  in  these  early  centuries  that  the  smallest  bodies 
of  Christians  could  have  had,  and  were  commanded  to  have, 
such  a  complete  ecclesiastical  organization  as  these  Efistles 
of  Ignatius  and  the  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons  require, 


^  To  the  Smyrneans,  8,  for  the  bishop's  duties  with  regard  to  the  eucharist, 
baptism,  and  the  love-feasts;  To  Polycarp,  5,  with  regard  to  marriage. 
Yet  the  advice  to  meet  more  frequently  for  the  eucharistic  service  is  given 
to  the  Ephesian  community  {Ephesians,  13). 

2  To  Polycarp,  2,  3,  5. 

3  To  the  Ephesians,  7  ;  To  the  3Iagnesians,  11  ;  To  the  Philadelphians, 
6  ;    To  the  Smyrneans,  4. 

4  To  the  Smyrneans,  11;  To  Polycarp,  7  ;  To  the  Philadelphians,  10 ; 
To  the  Ephesians,  1,2;   To  the  Magnesians,  2,  6  ;   To  the  Trallians,  1. 


THE   SUPPORT  OF  THE   MINISTRY  201 

and  how  they  could  be  at  the  same  tim  e  so  independent  and 
self-supporting.  A  large  part  of  the  problem  of  ecclesiastical 
extension  in  our  own  days,  at  home  and  on  the  mission  field, 
has  to  do  with  money.  Churches  and  other  buildings  have  to 
be  erected,  and  a  salaried  ministry  has  to  be  supported.  But 
it  must  be  remembered  that  in  these  early  days  the  ministry  was 
not  paid  as  we  understand  payment,  and  that  money  for  build- 
ings was  not  needed.  Church  buildings  did  not  exist  mitil  thei^-r-^'  ^ 
second  century  was  drawing  to  a  close,  and  then  only  in  large 
and  populous  centres.  The  only  property  which  the  Church ) 
had  besides  its  copies  of  the  Scriptures,  its  congregational  re- 
cords and  perhaps  a  place  of  burial,  were  the  offerings,  mostly 
in  kind,  which  the  faithful  presented  during  the  meeting  for 
thanksgiving,  and  which  were  almost  immediately  distributed. 
Justin  Martyr  gives  the  earliest  description  in  his  Apology. 
"  On  the  day  called  Sunday,  all  who  live  in  town  or  country 
gather  together  in  one  place,  and  the  memoirs  of  the  apostles 
or  of  the  prophets  are  read  as  long  as  time  permits ;  then  when 
the  reader  has  ceased  the  president  verbally  instructs,  and 
exhorts  us  to  the  imitation  of  these  good  things.  Then  we 
all  stand  together  and  pray,  and,  when  prayer  is  ended,  bread 
and  wine  are  brought  and  the  president  offers  prayers  and 
thanksgivings,  according  to  his  ability,  and  the  people  assent, 
saying  Amen.  Then  there  is  a  distribution  to  each  of  that  over 
which  thanks  has  been  given,  and  a  portion  is  sent  by  the  deacons 
to  those  who  are  absent.  Then  they  who  are  well  to  do  and  are 
willing,  give  what  each  thinks  fit ;  and  it  is  collected  and  de- 
posited with  the  president,  who  succours  orphans  and  widows 
and  those  who,  through  sickness  or  any  other  cause,  are  in  want, 
those  who  are  in  bondage  and  the  strangers  sojourning  among 
us — in  a  word  of  all  who  are  in  need."  ^ 

The  gifts   so   bestowed   and  distributed   were  the   property 
of  the  early  Church — all  that  it  had.      Both  Justin  and  Ter- 
tuUian  insist  on  the  fact  that  these  offerings  were  of  free-will, 
^  Justin,  Apology,  i.  67 


202     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

contrasting  them,  it  is  probable,  with  the  monthly  compulsory- 
payments  made  by  the  members  of  confraternities  ;  but  this  did 
not  hinder  indications  being  given  about  these  offerings.  We 
find  a  continuous  series  of  recommendations  that  the  first  fruits 
of  all  the  necessaries  of  life  ought  to  be  given.  All  the  oldest 
ecclesiastical  manuals,  from  the  Didache  downwards,  contain 
injunctions  to  the  people  about  these  first  fruits.  In  the  Didache 
these  offerings  went  to  support  the  prophets,  and  failing  them 
the  poor  of  the  community ;  and  the  Pastoral  Epistles  ^  mention 
a  church  roll  of  members  who  ought  to  share  because  of  their 
poverty.  In  the  quotation  just  made  from  Justin  Martyr  these 
first  fruits  are  distributed  among  the  widows,  orphans,  poor 
strangers  and  so  on  ;  Tertullian  describes  a  similar  mode  of 
distribution  ;  so  do  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  which  expressly 
prohibit  any  claim  on  the  part  of  the  ministry  to  share. ^  In  the 
ancient  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons  the  elders  superintend 
the  bishop,  while  he  makes  the  distribution,^  but  in  Justin  and 
in  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus  the  full  control  of  this  distribution 
Ues  with  the  president  or  bishop.  It  is  probable  that  the  mem- 
bers of  the  ministry  from  the  begimiing  had  some  share  in  these 
offerings,  but  not  in  the  way  of  stipend,  and  only  if  they  could 
be  classed  among  the  poor.  The  ancient  Sources  of  the  Apostolic 
Canons  teach  us  that  the  pastor  may  share  if  need  be,  but  not 
by  way  of  stipend.  Dr.  Hatch  has  only  summed  up  what  the 
history  of  the  whole  period  teaches  when  he  says  :  "  The  funds 
of  the  primitive  communities  consisted  entirely  of  voluntary 
offerings.  Of  these  offerings  those  office-bearers  whose  circum- 
stances required  it  were  entitled  to  a  share.     They  received 

'  Didache,  xiii.  1  ;  1  Tim.  v.  9.  The  Pastoral  Epistles  perhaps  teach 
us  that  the  ministry  have  a  share  ;  cf.  1  Tim.  v.  17, 18 ;  2  Tim.  i.  4-7,  but 
the  seventh  verse  of  the  latter  passage  suggests  that  the  share  is  not  by 
M'ay  of  stipend. 

2  TertulUan,  Aiwlogy,  39.  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  Canon  xxxii,  (Riedel) 
KirdienrechtsqueUen  des  Patriarchats  Alexandrien,  p.  221. 

3  Texte  und  Untersuchungen,  II.  v.  13-15,  or  Sources  of  the  Apostolic 
Canons,  p.  13, 


THE   SUPPORT   OF   THE  MINISTRY  203 

such  a  share  only  on  account  of  their  poverty.  They  were, 
so  far,  in  the  position  of  the  widows  and  orphans  and  helpless 
poor."  ' 

The  idea  that  when  men  are  once  set  apart  for  the  function 
of  office-bearers  in  the  Christian  Church  it  becomes  the  duty 
of  the  Church  to  provide  them  with  the  necessaries  of  life  does 
not  belong  to  the  times  of  primitive  Christianity.  The  office- 
bearers of  the  early  Church  were  clergy  in  virtue  of  their  call, 
election,  and  setting  apart  by  special  prayer  for  sacred  office  ; 
but  they  worked  at  trades,  carried  on  mercantile  pursuits,  and 
were  not  separate  from  the  laity  in  their  every-day  fife.  We 
find  bishops  who  were  shepherds,  weavers,  lawyers,  shipbuilders,^ 
and  so  on,  and  the  elders  and  deacons  were  almost  invariably 
men  who  were  not  supported  by  the  churches  to  which  they 
belonged.^  An  interesting  series  of  inscriptions  was  found 
on  the  gravestones  of  the  cemetery  of  the  little  town  of  Corycus, 
in  Cilicia  Tracheia,  records  of  the  Christian  community  there. 
They  can  scarcely  be  older  than  the  fifth,  and  not  later  than  the 
sixth  century.  One  of  them  marks  the  burial  place  of  a  master 
potter  and  another  that  of  a  goldsmith,  both  of  whom  were 
elders  or  presbyters  of  the  Church  there.  The  power  of  the 
laity  in  the  early  Church  did  not  depend  simply  on  the  fact 
that  they  chose  the  office-bearers  and  had  some  indefinite  in- 
fluence over  councils,  as  some  modern  writers  put  it,^  but  on  the 

^  The  Organization  of  the  Early  Churches  (1881),  p.  147. 

2  A  shepherd,  Socrates,  Eccles.  Hist.  i.  12  ,  a  weaver,  Sozomen,  Eccles. 
Hist.  vii.  28  ;  a  shipbuilder,  S.  Gregorii  Magni  Epistolae,  xiii.  26 ;  a 
lawyer,  S.  Gregorii  Magiii,  Epistolae,  x.  10.  Compare  Cyprian  De  Lajysis  G. 
Basil,  Epistolae,  198.  Compare  Hatch,  The  Organistition  of  the  Early 
Christian  Churches  (1881),  p.  148,  who,  besides  giving  the  well-known 
individual  instances  quotes  regulations  from  the  Theodosian  Code  and  from 
the  Statuta  Ecclesiae  Antiqua  proving  the  general  practice.  The  eighty- 
seventh  of  the  Canons  of  Basil  says  that  "  none  of  the  clergy  are  to  engage 
in  merchandise  but  that  they  are  to  learn  a  handicraft  and  Uve  of  the  laboui 
of  their  hands."  Riedel,  Die  Kirchenrechtsquellen  des  Patriarchats  Alex 
andrien  (1900),  p.  270.  3  Bull,  de  Corr.  Hell.  vii.  230  if. 

4  As  for  example  by  the  Rev.  R.  B.  Rackham  in  Essays  on  Church 
Reform  (1898),  p.  30  ff 


204     THE  MINISTRY  IN   THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

fact  that  in  the  earliest  times  none  of  the  office-bearers,  and  for 
many  centuries  most  of  them,  did  not  depend  upon  the  Church 
as  a  whole  to  provide  them  with  the  necessaries  of  life.  They 
were  clergy,  as  has  been  said,  in  virtue  of  their  selection  for 
office  and  of  their  solemn  setting  apart  to  perform  clerical 
functions ;  but  they  had  daily  association  with  the  laity  in 
the  workshop,  on  the  farm,  in  the  warehouse,  in  the  law-courts, 
and  in  the  market-place.  They  held  what  must  seem  to  be  a 
very  anomalous  position  to  mediaeval  and  modern  episcopalians. 
When  the  ancient  practice  is  revived,  as  it  was  by  the  Reformed 
Church  at  the  Reformation,  episcopalians  speak  disdainfully  of 
lay-elders  and  lay-deacons,  as  if  an  ecclesiastical  stipend  and  not 
consecration  by  prayer  and  the  laying  on  or  giving  of  hands  were 
the  true  and  essential  mark  of  ordination.  But  the  practice  had 
its  value  in  the  early  centuries  and  has  its  importance  now.  It 
knit  clergy  and  laity  together  in  a  very  simple  and  thorough 
fashion,  and  brought  men,  whose  life  and  callings  made  them 
feel  as  laymen  do,  within  the  circle  of  the  hierarchy  which  ruled, 
and  so  prevented  the  hierarchy  degenerating  into  a  clerical 
caste. 

During  the  last  decades  of  the  second  and  throughout  the 
third  century  the  conception  of  Ignatius,  to  him  perhaps  only 
a  devout  dream,'  dominated  the  whole  Church,  or  at  least  a 
great  part  of  it.  Every  Christian  community  had  at  its  head 
a  single  president  who  is  almost  always  called  the  bishop.  He 
presided  over  the  session  of  elders,  over  the  body  of  deacons, 
and  over  the  congregation.     The  whole  Christian  activity  of 

'  Compare  Ramsay,  The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire,  pp.  370-1, 
where  he  says  that  Ignatius  is  not  an  historian  describing  facts  but  a  preacher 
giving  advice  ;  and  adds  that  he  does  not  find  in  Ignatius  proof  that 
bishops  were  regarded  as  ex-offlcio  supreme,  that  his  language  is  quite 
consistent  with  the  view  that  the  respect  actually  paid  to  the  bishop 
in  each  community  depended  on  his  individual  character,  and  that  his 
reiteration  of  the  principle  of  the  authority  of  the  bishop,  which  came  to 
him  as  a  revelation,  makes  it  evident  that  he  did  not  find  his  ideal  in 
actual  existence.  Compare  also  Sanday  in  the  Expositor  (1888,  July-Dec.), 
p.  326. 


THE  THREE-FOLD  MINISTRY  205 

the  community  found  its  centre  in  him,  as  it  does  in  presbyterian 
congregations  in  the  present  day.  He  presided  over  the  pubhc 
worship  in  all  its  parts  ;  had  chief  charge  of  the  sick  and  of  the 
sinful ;  he  was  over  the  discipline  and  over  the  administration 
of  the  property  of  the  community  whatever  that  happened  to  be. 
This  was  his  position  as  a  matter  of  fact.  On  the  other  hand, 
his  position  theoretically  was  by  no  means  so  unique.  There 
is  many  a  trace  in  the  ancient  canons,  as  we  shall  afterwards 
see,  that  the  bishop  was  only  'primus  inter  pares  in  the  session 
of  elders,  and  that  he  was  distinguished  from  them  by  two  things 
only — a  special  seat  in  the  church  and  the  power  to  ordain 
elders  and  deacons.  The  practice  made  him  the  centre  of  the 
whole  congregational  life  and  the  ruler  ;  the  theory  recalled 
the  earlier  days  when  every  congregation  was  governed  by  a 
council  of  elders  who  had  no  president.  We  find  the  theory 
in  such  law-books  as  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus  ;  ^  it  was  repeated 
by  Jerome  ;  it  never  lacked  supporters  during  the  Middle  Ages, 
of  whom  Thomas  Aquinas  was  one  ;  it  re-emerged  at  the  Refor- 
mation when  the  Reformed  Church  revived  the  ecclesiastical 
organization  of  the  early  centuries  ;  and  the  same  difference 
between  theory  and  practice  exists  among  the  Reformed  Churches 
in  the  present  day. 

The  great  change  in  the  ministry  which  we  have  seen  evolving 
itself  in  the  three  documents  selected,  and  which  belonged  to 
the  second  and  third  centuries,  was  that  the  ruhng  body  in  every 
congregation  changed  from  being  a  session  of  elders  without 
a  president  and  became  a  session  with  a  president.  The  presi- 
dent, sometimes  called  the  pastor,  but  usually  the  bishop,  became 
gradually  the  centre  of  all  the  ecclesiastical  life  of  the  local 
Christian  church  and  the  one  potent  office-bearer.  We  have 
now  to  ask  how  this  came  about.  In  answer  one  thing  only 
can  be  asserted  with  confidence.  The  change  came  gradually. 
It  provoked  no  great  opposition.  It  was  everywhere,  or  almost 
everywhere,  accepted.  But  when  we  seek  for  the  causes  that 
*  Compare  below,  p.  248. 


206     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

produced  the  change,  or  ask  what  were  the  paths  along  which 
the  change  manifested  itself — then  we  can  only  give  conjectural 
answers. 

Probably  the  main  impulse  came  from  the  pressure  of  tempta- 
tion— intellectual  and  moral — and  persecution,  and  the  feeling 
that  resistance  to  both  would  be  strengthened  by  a  more 
thorough  unity  than  could  be  attained  under  the  leadership 
of  a  number  of  men  who  had  no  individual  head.  One  man 
can  take  a  firmer  grip  of  things.  Divided  responsibility  con- 
tinually means  varying  counsels.  What  is  the  business  of  many 
is  often  the  work  of  none.  A  divided  leadership  continually 
brings  with  it  fickle  and  impotent  action.  The  need  for  an 
undivided  front  in  time  of  danger  was  what  inspired  Ignatius, 
when,  with  the  eye  of  a  statesman  and  the  fire  of  a  prophet, 
he  pleaded  for  the  union  of  the  congregation  under  one  leader. 
The  circumstances  of  the  times  and  the  voices  of  those  who 
led  in  the  movement,  all  suggest  that  the  supreme  need  of  the 
moment  was  unity  ;  and  that  unity  could  be  best  won  and 
maintained  by  the  change  which  was  made. 

The  paths  along  which  the  change  progressed  probably  dif- 
fered in  various  places.  It  is  quite  unnecessary  to  suppose  that 
the  process  was  everywhere  the  same.  It  is  much  more  natural 
that  there  should  have  been  several  at  work  simultaneously. 
Differences  in  racial  temperament  and  in  experience  in  the  art 
of  governing ;  greater  or  less  exposure  to  the  disruptive  in- 
fluences of  strange  teaching  ;  more  or  less  capacity  to  endure 
temptations  ;  differences  in  local  environment  and  in  inherited 
political  usages,  might  easily  produce  different  modes  in  the 
evolution  of  the  ecclesiastical  organization.  Dr.  Lightfoot 
has  shown,  with  his  usual  careful  minuteness,  how  the  three- 
fold ministry  came  into  being  much  sooner  in  some  parts  of  the 
Empire  than  others,  and  that  it  appeared  first  in  Asia  Minor,' 
which  differed  in  the  fact  that  it  was  more  exposed  to  the  divisive 
influences  of  strange  teachings,  and  that  the  people  had  been 
'  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  (1881),  6th  ed.  p.  206  ff 


THE  THREE-FOLD  MINISTRY  207 

long  accustomed  to  the  rule  of  one  man  in  secular  affairs.  It 
well  may  be  imagined  that  the  different  social  surroundings 
which  belonged  to  Rome,  to  the  cities  of  Greece,  and  to  Asia 
Minor,  bred  different  ecclesiastical  conditions,  which  led  to  the 
selection  of  differing  paths  in  the  development  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical organizations. 

Professor  Ramsay  has  suggested,  ingeniously,  one  way  in 
which  the  change  may  have  come.  His  idea  is  that  any  mem- 
.ber  of  the  session  of  presbyters  or  elders  became  an  episcofus  or 
overseer  when  he  was  given  the  oversight  of  any  special  duty 
by  his  brethren.  The  episcopus  who  did  his  work  well  would 
naturally  continue  to  do  it,  and  the  tendency  was  for  his  function 
to  become  permanent.  One  of  the  most  important  duties  which 
fell  to  the  college  of  elders  was  correspondence  with  other  Chris- 
tian churches  and  the  reception  and  entertainment  of  the  delegates 
who  came  from  other  churches  to  visit  them.  The  elder  who 
had  the  oversight  of,  or  was  the  episcopus  for  this  work,  naturally 
became  a  very  important  man.  He  was  the  representative 
of  his  own  church  to  all  Christians  outside  it.  He  might  easily 
come  to  represent  the  unity  of  the  Church  to  those  who  also 
were  inside  it,  more  especially  as  he  was  the  official  who  would 
naturally  be  selected  to  hold  the  property  of  the  congregation 
when  it  became  possessed  of  a  place  of  burial.  Thus  he  came 
to  stand  forth  from  among  the  other  elders  as  the  episcopus 
par  excellence.  Thus  gradually  one  of  the  presbyters  or  elders 
became  the  episcopus  for  everything  within  the  community, 
and  the  session  of  elders  received  its  permanent  head.^  There 
is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  for  this  conjecture.  For  one  thing, 
there  is  evidence  that  the  appointment  of  one  of  the  elders  to 
look  after  the  commimications  with  other  churches  was  actually 
a  custom ;  ^  for  another  it  gives  a  reasonable  explanation  of 

1  The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire  (1893),  p.  367  ff. 

2  In  the  Pastor  of  Hermas,  the  old  lady  who  represents  the  Church  and 
who  has  given  Hermas  a  revelation  orders  him  to  make  two  books  and  give 
one  to  Clement  and  the  other  to  Grapte,  "  and  Clement  will  send  his  to 


208     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE   SECOND  CENTURY 

those  lists  of  bishops  in  various  churches  dating  back  to  times 
when  all  the  evidence  shows  that  there  was  no  real  permanent 
presidents  in  existence.  They  are  the  lists  of  the  men  who, 
being  the  foreign  correspondents,  represented  the  unity  of  their 
respective  churches  to  all  Christians  outside,  and  were  therefore 
regarded  as  the  most  prominent  members. 

It  is  also  probable  that  the  celebration  of  the  Holy  Supper 
suggested  one  permanent  president.  It  is  easy  to  conceive 
how  the  meeting  for  "  exhortation "  could  be  conducted  by 
a  session  of  elders,  but  it  is  very  difficult  to  imagine  a  collegiate 
superintendence  of  the  meeting  for  "  thanksgiving."  Did 
the  members  of  the  session  of  presbyter-bishops  or  elders  take 
it  in  turn  to  preside,  or  in  what  way  was  it  done  ?  We  do  not 
know.  But  we  do  know  that  in  the  second  century  there  was 
one  official  who  presided  at  the  Lord's  Supper,  and  that  he,  the 
Trpoecrrwg  or  president  of  Justin  Martyr,^  is  clearly  the  antici- 
pation of  the  later  bishop.  There  was  evidently  some  close 
connexion  in  thought  between  the  one  bishop  and  the  unity 
of  the  congregation  or  church  at  the  Holy  Supper.  One  bishop, 
one  place  of  celebration  {Oua-iaa-rtjpiov)  and  one  Eucharist 
are  almost  equivalent  terms  in  Ignatius.  This  thought  would 
lead  us  to  imagine  that  the  episcojms  was  the  presbyter  or 
elder  selected  by  his  brethren  to  preside  at  the  Eucharist,  and 
that  he  was  bishop  while  he  was  so  presiding.^     The  presbyter 

tlie  foreign  countries,  for  commission  has  been  given  Imn  to  do  so,  and  Grapte 
will  admonish  the  widows  and  the  orphans  ;  but  you  (Hernias,  who  was 
a  presbyter)  will  read  the  words  in  this  city  along  \vith  the  elders  who  pre- 
side over  the  Church,"  Visioiies,  ii.  4. 

^  Apology,  i.  67. 

^  Tertullian  in  his  De  Praescriptione  Haereticorum,  41,  speaking  of  the 
condition  of  the  Gnostic  or  Marcionite  Churches,  says  : — "  itaque  alius 
hodie  episcopus,  eras  alius."  Sohm  {Kirchenrecht,  i.  119  n.)  takes  this  as 
a  proof  of  the  condition  of  things  in  the  most  primitive  days.  He  infers 
that  in  the  earlier  times  when  there  were  several  bishops  in  each  com- 
munity the  one  who  presided  at  the  Eucharist  was  the  bishop  for  that  day, 
and  gave  place  to  another  on  another  day  who  thus  became  the  bishop  in 
his  turn.  It  is  doubtful  whether  we  can  infer  anything  about  primitive 
usages  from  these  references  in  Tertullian. 


THE  THREE-FOLD  MINISTRY  209 

who  had  a  special  gift  for  this  sacred  work  would  naturally  be 
frequently  called  to  undertake  it,  and  the  duty  might  easily 
become  a  permanent  one.  In  the  Sources  of  the  Apostolic 
Canons  it  is  the  bishop  or  pastor  who  presides  at  the  Holy 
Communion,  although  he  is  under  the  disciplinary  authority  of 
the  elders. 

It  may  also  be  said  that  the  need  for  one  authority  in  doctrinal 
matters  led  to  the  selection  of  one  man,  and  to  placing  on  him 
the  responsibility  of  seeing  that  the  members  of  the  congregation 
were  not  tempted  away  from  the  true  faith  by  irresponsible 
teachers,  who  offered  themselves  to  instruct  the  community. 
This  conception,  as  we  shall  see  later,  was  developed  in  a  special 
way  with  reference  to  the  office-bearer  by  Irenaeus,  and  some 
critics  see  it  foreshadowed  in  the  letters  of  Ignatius. 

No  one  way  needs  to  be  selected  as  the  only  path  by  which  the 
organization  advanced,  and  the  college  of  elders  received  a 
president  who  was  the  permanent  head  of  the  community,  and 
the  Uving  and  personal  representative  of  its  unity.  They 
might  all  have  their  effect  and  that  simultaneously. 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  the  duty  of  presiding 
at  the  Holy  Supper,  which  is  invariably  seen  to  belong  to  the 
bishop  as  soon  as  he  emerges  from  the  college  of  presbyters  or 
elders,  brought  with  it  the  control  over  the  gifts  of  the  faithful 
which  were  presented  after  the  Eucharistic  service,  and  formed 
for  long  the  only  property  of  the  congregation.  If  we  add  to 
this  that  the  presbyter  or  elder  chosen  for  this  highest  portion 
of  the  worship  was  frequently  a  man  possessed  of  the  prophetic 
gift  as  Ignatius  was,  additional  reverence  and  obedience  would 
not  fail  to  be  bestowed  upon  him  ;  and  we  can  see  how  the  old 
reverence  for  the  "  prophetic  ministry  "  could  easily  be  trans- 
ferred to  the  new  authority. 

Whatever  paths  led  to  the  change  in  the  ministry  whereby 
the  rule  was  transferred  from  a  college  of  elders  without  a  presi- 
dent to  a  college  with  a  president,  when  once  the  change  was 
made  the  power  of  the  episcopus  grew  rapidly ;  and  one  source 

CM.  14 


210     THE  MINISTRY  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY 

of  this  increase  of  authority  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  was  always 
the  administrator  of  the  property  of  the  local  church. 

Without  any  apostolic  sanction,  in  virtue  of  the  power  lying 
within  the  community  and  given  to  it  by  the  Master,  the  Church 
of  the  second  century  effected  a  change  in  its  ministry  quite  as 
radical,  if  not  more  so,  as  that  made  by  the  Reformed  Church 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  when  it  swept  away  mediaeval  ex- 
crescences, restored  the  bishops  to  their  ancient  position  of  pastors 
of  congregations,  and  vested  the  power  of  oversight  in  councils 
of  greater  and  lesser  spheres  of  authority.  What  was  within 
the  power  of  the  Christian  people  of  the  second  century  belongs 
to  it  always  when  providential  circumstances  seem  to  demand 
a  change  in  the  organization,  for  the  ministry  depends  on  the 
Church  and  not  the  Church  on  the  ministry. 


The  Fall  of  the   Prophetic   Ministry 
and  the   Conservative  Revolt 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE   FALL  OF  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY  AND  THE  CONSERVATIVE 

REVOLT 

THE  prophetic  ministry  of  the  apostolic  and  immediately 
sub-apostolic  times  passed  away  in  the  course  of  the 
second  century,  and  its  overthrow  was  a  much  greater  alteration 
of  the  organization  of  the  churches  than  the  institution  of  a 
three-fold  ministry,  important  as  that  was.  The  difference 
may  be  seen  from  two  extracts.  "  Every  prophet,"  says  the 
oldest  ecclesiastical  manual,  "  who  speaketh  in  the  Spirit,  ye 
shall  neither  try  nor  judge  ;  for  every  sin  shall  be  forgiven, 
but  that  sin  shall  not  be  forgiven."  '  That  comes  from  a  time 
when  the  prophetic  ministry  was  the  great  controlhng  power. 
"  Wretched  men,"  says  Irenaeus,  "  who  wish  to  be  false  pro- 
phets .  .  .  holding  aloof  from  the  communion  of  the  brethren  "  ; 
and  the  test  of  being  in  communion  with  the  brethren  is  "to 
obey  the  elders  who  are  in  the  Church."  ^  That  comes  from  the 
end  of  our  period. 

The  change  between  the  time  when  the  prophet  was  not 
to  be  judged,  but  to  be  obeyed,  and  when  disobedience  to  his 
commands  was  believed  to  be  "  an  unpardonable  sin  "  ;  and 
the  time  when  the  test  of  a  true  prophet  was  obedience  to  the 
office-bearers  of  the  local  church,  whose  superior  he  had  once 
been,  amounted  to  a  revolution.  It' was  so,  and  the  overthrow 
of  the  supremacy  of  the  prophetic  ministry  rent  the  Church  in 
twain 

^  Didache,  xi.  7. 

2  Irenaeus,  Contra  Haereses,  III.  xi.  9  and  IV.  xxvi.  2. 

213 


214     THE  FALL  OF  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

It  was  inevitable.  The  more  close  and  firm  the  organization 
of  the  local  churches  became  the  less  room  remained  for  the 
exercise  of  the  prophetic  ministry,  which  in  the  nature  of  things 
claimed  at  once  freedom  for  itself  and  the  power  of  ruling  in 
some  indefinite  way  over  the  churches  which  admitted  its  exercise 
among  them.  A  careful  examination  of  the  scanty  records  of 
the  second  century  reveals  that  the  early  prophetic  ministry 
was  active  within  the  churches  down  till  the  Montanist  revolt, 
and  that  in  the  churches  which  shared  in  that  movement  it  was 
continued,  and  its  place  within  the  Church  became  accentuated. 
It  is  also  possible  to  show  in  what  way  the  office-bearers  of  the 
local  churches  could  gradually  come  to  take  the  place  of  the 
prophetic  ministry,  and  how  with  the  great  body  of  Christians 
this  could  be  done  naturally  and  without  any  strong  feeling 
that  there  was  a  real  breach  with  the  past. 

In  St.  Paul's  summary  of  the  gifts  which  the  Spirit  bestows, 
and  which  when  manifested  within  a  community  of  Christians 
make  it  a  Church,  it  can  be  seen  that  all  these  gifts  may  be 
divided  into  two  classes — those  which  enable  their  possessors 
to  edify  the  brethren  by  speaking  the  word  of  God,  and  those 
which  fit  them  for  serving  the  community  in  many  practical 
ways.  Two  of  these  practical  gifts,  "  pilotings  "  {Kv^epvriaeiii) 
and  "  aids  "  {avrtXri^i^ei^)  foreshadow  in  the  abstract  the  con- 
crete ofl&ces  of  overseer  and  servant ;  and  from  them  the  office- 
bearers of  the  local  churches  derive  their  origin.  The  task  of 
edifying  by  speech  belonged  primarily  to  the  first  class  of  gifted 
persons,  and  the  work  of  edifying  by  wise  counsels  and  all  manner 
of  brotherly  services  belonged  to  the  two  branches  of  the  second 
class  out  of  which  the  local  office-bearers  developed.  Edification 
by  the  Word  of  God  was  the  most  important  need  of  the  churches, 
and  if  the  "  gifted  "  apostles,  prophets  and  teachers  failed  any 
community  their  services  had  to  be  supplied  somehow. 

The  Didache  shows  us  the  transition  stage,  and  explains 
how  this  need  was  supplied  in  an  ordinary  way  when  the  ex- 
traordinary means  failed.     "  Appoint,  therefore,  for  yourselves 


AND  THE  CONSERVATIVE   REVOLT  215 

bishops  and  deacons  worthy  of  the  Lord,  men  that  are  meek  and 
are  not  covetous,  ui)right  and  proved ;  for  they  also  render  you 
the  service  of  the  prophets  and  teachers.  Therefore  neglect  them 
not,  for  they  are  your  honoured  ones,  together  with  the  prophets 
and  teachers."  These  words  in  itahcs  show  us  at  once  the  point 
of  junction  between  the  prophetic  and  the  local  ministry,  and 
indicate  how  the  latter  could  fulfil  the  duties  of  the  former. 
They  also  reveal  the  possibihty  of  the  aboHtion  of  the  prophetic 
ministry  as  a  permanent  part  of  the  organization  (to  use  the 
word  in  its  widest  sense)  of  the  local  churches.  When  the  wave 
of  spiritual  enthusiasm  and  illumination  which  came  with  the 
earUest  proclamation  of  the  Gospel  had  somewhat  spent  itself, 
there  was  need  to  supply  through  the  ordinary  office-bearers 
of  the  churches  that  exhortation  and  instruction  which  in  the 
earliest  times  had  been  left  to  the  inspiration  of  those  gifted 
with  the  power  of  speaking  the  Word  of  God.  Hence  the  Didache^ 
counsels  the  community  to  select  men  for  its  office-bearers 
in  the  knowledge  that  they  may  be  called  upon  to  supply  this 
need.  But  when  once  the  local  churches  began  to  have  their 
spiritual  needs  satisfied  \vithin  their  own  circle  and  the  bands 
of  association  grew  stronger,  it  is  easy  to  imagine  that  the  power 

^  "  The  peculiar  value  of  the  Didache  consists  in  this,  that  it  reveals 
to  us  the  process  in  the  moment  of  transition.  It  brings  down  the  bird 
as  it  were  upon  the  wing.  The  sentence  itaUcized  explains  why  the  per- 
manent officials  of  the  Christian  Churches  did  not  possess  at  first  all  the 
functions  which  they  possessed  later.  They  did  not  possess  them  because 
the  more  prosaic  duties  which  they  themselves  discharged  were  supple- 
mented by  that  extraordinary  wave  of  spiritual  exaltation  which  swept 
over  the  whole  primitive  Cliurch.  In  that  age  the  wish  of  Moses  was 
well-nigh  fulfilled,  that  '  all  the  Lord's  people  were  prophets.'  The 
difficulty  was  not  to  incite  to  the  attainment  of  such  gifts,  but  to  regulate 
and  control  them.  One  by  one  they  became  rarer,  and  disappeared. 
The  apostolate  was  the  first  to  go.  Prophecy  lasted  until  it  was  finally 
discredited  by  Montanism.  The  class  of  teachers  survived  still  longer 
into  the  third  century  ;  indeed,  it  would  hardly  be  wrong  to  regard  the 
Catechetical  School  of  Alexandria  as  a  systematizing  of  this  office,  %vith 
learning  and  philosophy  substituted  for  the  primitive  enthusiasm." 
Sanday,  Expositor  (1887,  Jan. -June),  p.  17. 


216      THE  FALL  OF  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

of  the  oflSce-bearers  grew  strong  enough  to  withstand  the  mem- 
bers of  the  prophetic  ministry  miless  the  prophets  were  content 
to  take  a  secondary  place.  The  very  fact  that  the  office-bearers 
could  "  render  the  service  of  the  prophets  and  teachers  "  in- 
evitably tended  to  place  them,  the  permanent  officials  of  the 
local  churches,  permanently  in  the  position  of  the  exhorters, 
instructors,  and  leaders  of  the  public  worship  of  the  communities. 
Hence,  while  we  can  trace  the  presence  and  the  power  of  the 
prophetic  ministry  during  a  great  part  of  the  second  century, 
we  can  also  see  that  complaints  against  false  prophets  became 
more  and  more  common,  and  that  there  was  a  tendency  to  make 
the  test  of  true  prophecy  subordination  on  the  part  of  the  prophets 
to  the  control  of  the  permanent  office-bearers  of  the  churches.^ 

We  can  see  the  transition  from  the  time  when  the  prophets 
were  supreme  to  the  days  when  they  were  expected,  if  true 
prophets,  to  be  subordinate  to  or  at  least  deferential  towards 
the  office-bearers  of  the  community,  was  the  more  easily  effec- 
ted when  we  remember  that  it  is  highly  probable  that  some 
men  among  those  chosen  to  lead  the  brethren  by  their  gifts  of 
governing  had  also  the  power  of  exhortation  and  instruction. 
This  was  probably  the  case  from  the  earliest  times.  The 
TTpo'CcrraixevoL  of  1  Thessalonians  v.  12,  not  only  laboured  among 
the  brethren  but  "  admonished  "  ;  and  to  "  admonish  "  {vov- 
derelv)  seems  to  imply  more  than  mere  leading.  Whatever 
be  the  date  of  the  Pastoral  Epistles,  it  is  clear  that  by  the  time 
they  were  written,  the  functions  of  instruction  and  leadership 
were  conjoined  ;  and  few  critics,  even  among  those  who  dispute 
the  Pauhne  authorship,  will  be  inclined  to  place  them  as  late  as 
Harnack  does.^     Then,  as  before  remarked,  those  office-bearers 

^  Perhaps  the  earhest  trace  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  Clement,  1  Epistle, 
xlviii.  5 : — "  Let  a  man  be  faithful,  let  him  be  able  to  expound  a  deep 
saying,  let  him  be  wise  in  the  discernment  of  words,  let  him  be  strenuous 
in  deeds,  let  him  be  pure  ;  so  much  the  more  ought  he  to  be  lowly  in  mind, 
in  proportion  as  he  seemeth  to  be  greater  ;  and  he  ought  to  seek  the 
common  advantage  of  all,  and  not  his  OAvn." 

^  If  leadershiji  implied  instruction  in  the  earliest  times  (1  Thessalonians) 


CAUSES  WHICH  LED  TO  THE  FALL     217 

who  stand  forth  most  clearly  in  these  ancient  times  were  almost 
all  men  who  had  the  prophetic  gift.  We  have  already  seen  how 
the  divine  afflatus  descended  on  Ignatius  while  he  was  preaching 
in  Philadelphia,  and  made  him  cry  forth  words  which  the  Spirit 
put  in  his  mouth.  The  prophetic  gift  was  to  be  found  among 
the  office-bearers  of  the  local  churches  before  the  conflict  of 
jurisdictions  arose,  and  the  office-bearers  who  possessed  it  had 
all  the  divine  authority  which  was  supposed  to  belong  to  the 
prophetic  order. 

All  these  circumstances  have  to  be  taken  into  account  in 
attempting  to  describe  the  great  change  in  the  ministry  which 
the  second  century  witnessed ;  and  the  last-mentioned  is  useful 
in  enabling  us  to  see  how,  while  the  overthrow  of  the  prophetic 
ministry  was  sufficient  to  provoke  a  disruption  of  the  Church, 
it  could  nevertheless  be  accepted  by  the  great  mass  of  the  Chris- 
tian people. 

We  have  no  specific  information  in  the  documents  of  post- 
apostoHc  Christianity  to  tell  us  how  and  by  what  steps  the  great 
revolution  was  brought  about ;  but  the  conditions  and  needs 
of  the  time  enable  us  to  put  ourselves  to  some  extent  in  the  place 
of  the  men  who  carried  out  the  change. 

Several  distinct  sets  of  circumstances  require  to  be  kept  in 
mind. 

In  the  first  place,  the  second  century  was  a  time  of  great 
fermentation  in  the  world  of  intellectual  paganism.  In  the 
east  of  Europe  and  among  the  Greek  inhabitants  of  Asia  Minor 
the  old  religions  had  lost  almost  all  their  real  power.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  people  of  Italy  also,  and  especially  of  the  more 
cultured  classes  of  Rome.  It  is  something  pathetic  to  learn 
that  the  only  one  of  the  ancient  Greek  deities  whose  cult  was 
still  practised  with  something  of  the  old  reverence  and  fervour 
was  Esculapius,  the  god  of  bodily  health,  and  that  he  was  called 
Soter,  the  Saviour,  as  if  men  had  despaired  of  salvation  of  soul 

the  fact  that  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles  leadership  involves  instruction  does 
not  imply  that  these  epistles  are  late. 


218      THE   FALL   OF  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

and  could  hope  for  no  more  than  the  health  of  the  body.  On  the 
other  hand,  worships  strange  to  Greek  or  Roman,  coming  from 
the  far  East,  with  painful  initiations  and  purifications  for  those 
who  felt  the  power  of  sin  or  the  fickleness  of  imperfection  within 
them,  and  weird  philosophies  for  the  cultured,  spread  far  and 
wide,  counting  their  votaries  by  thousands  and  permeating  all 
classes    of    society. 

Among  them  were  systems  of  cosmical  speculation  and  mystic 
theosophy,  curiously  similar  to  what  we  find  in  Hinduism, 
and  possessing  that  strange  power  of  absorbing  and  assimilating 
religious  ideas  foreign  to  themselves,  which  is  still  such  a  feature 
of  Oriental  speculation.  Votaries  of  these  theosophies  were 
attracted  towards  the  doctrines  of  Christianity,  caught  at  the 
Christian  conceptions  of  redemption  and  of  the  Person  of  Christ, 
and  tried  to  find  room  for  them  among  the  medley  of  their 
fantastic  beliefs.  They  set  redemption  within  the  circle  of 
their  thoughts  about  the  inherent  evil  in  matter,  and  the  Person 
of  Christ  found  its  place  among  the  doctrines  of  emanation. 
Christianity  attracted  them  as  it  still  attracts  cultivated  Hindus. 
The  Brahma  Somaj,  the  Prarthana  Somaj,  the  Arya  Somaj, 
strange  attempts  to  absorb  some  features  of  Christianity  into 
Hinduism  in  the  nineteenth  century,  had  their  parallels  in  some 
of  the  Gnostic  speculations  of  the  earlier  centuries. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem  to  us,  those  weird  speculations  had 
an  attraction  for  many  cultivated  persons  who  had  embraced 
the  Christian  faith  ;  for  if  the  whole  phenomemmof  Gnosticism 
was,  as  it  seems  most  likely  to  have  been,  a  scheme  of  thought 
essentially  pagan,  trying  to  assimilate  some  leading  Christian 
ideas,  there  were  sides  to  the  movement  which  show  us  men 
who  were  really  Christians  attempting  to  make  use  of  these 
speculations  as  the  metaphysical  framework  on  which  to  stretch 
their  Christian  thoughts  and  to  give  them  the  shape  of  a  rational- 
ized theology.  These  metaphysics  of  "  wonderland,"  where 
the  categories  of  Aristotle  and  the  ideas  of  Plato  assumed  bodily 
shapes,  married  and  begot  a  fantastic  progeny,  filled  the  in- 


MARCIONITE  CHURCHES  219 

tellectual  atmosphere  of  the  times,  and  were  the  air  which  thinkers 
breathed.  The  Church  was  face  to  face  with  the  danger  of  seeing 
its  historical  verities  dissolve  into  the  shadowy  shapes  of  a  meta- 
physical mythology.  For  when  Gnosticism  entered  into  the 
Christian  societies,  and  claimed  to  be  a  philosophical  Chris- 
tianity, the  very  life  of  the  Church  was  threatened.^ 

Nor  were  these  the  only  difficulties  of  intellectual  specu- 
lation which  the  Church  of  the  second  century  had  to  face. 
We  are  apt  to  think  that  the  apparent  contradiction  between  an 
Almighty  Maker  of  all  things  and  the  miseries  of  life  is  the 
peculiar  property  of  our  own  age.  That  is  not  so.  Men  felt 
keenly  the  contrasts  which  trouble  modern  minds.  They  Hved 
in  a  civilization  as  intellectually  trained  as  our  own.  How 
could  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Father 
of  Mercies  and  the  God  of  all  Love,  inspire  the  Old  Testament, 
where  the  Jews  were  ordered  to  exterminate  their  enemies  and 
threaten  and  practise  all  kinds  of  cruelties  ?  How  can  creation, 
groaning  and  travaihng  in  pain,  be  the  work  of  that  God  Who 
has  manifested  Himself  in  Jesus  Christ  ?  Nature  is  not  merciful. 
It  seems  hard  and  pitiless.  The  mystery  of  pain  broods  over 
it  and  in  it.  History  is  full  of  battle  and  pestilence,  of  turmoil 
and  misery. 

Among  men  who  had  ideas  Uke  these  Marcion  was  a  leader. 
His  solution  of  the  problem  was  that  the  God  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  the  Creator  of  the  Universe  were  very  like  each  other 
and  very  unlike  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 
The  Being  who  had  created  scorpions  and  sent  venemous  creep- 
ing things  into  the  world  was  not  unlike  the  God  Who  had 
commanded  the  slaughter  of  the  Amalekites  and  had  inspired 
the  imprecatory  Psalms.  An  old  world  Count  Tolstoy,  Marcion 
said  that  Christ's  Christianity  had  nothing  to  do  with  any  part 
of  the  Old  Testament,  nor  with  much  of  the  New.     The  New 


^  Compare  Hatch,  The  Organisation  of  the  Early  Churches  (1881),  pp.  91, 
92. 


220      THE   FALL  OF  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

Testament  had  indeed  come  from  Jesus  Christ,  but  it  had  been 
sadly  corrupted  by  the  votaries  of  the  God  who  created  the 
Universe.  He  constructed  a  Canon  of  Scripture  for  himself 
and  for  his  disciples,  and  into  his  Scriptures  no  portion  of  the 
Old  Testament  was  admitted,  and  from  them  much  of  the  New 
was  excluded.  He  went  back  to  the  Pauline  Epistles,  the  earliest 
literary  creations  of  the  Christian  inspiration,  to  seek  in  them 
the  purest  records  of  the  teaching  of  that  Saviour,  Who,  un- 
heralded, as  he  thought,  by  any  partial  anticipations,  had  come 
suddenly  to  reveal  to  the  world  the  hitherto  absolutely  unknown 
God  of  Love  and  Mercy.  Marcion  was  a  man  of  deep  and  genuine 
rehgious  character,  of  an  intensely  practical  nature,  and  with- 
out any  tendency  to  speculation.  He  stood  forth  in  that  age 
of  mixed  faiths,  of  eclectic  paganism  and  Gnostic  Christianity, 
as  a  teacher  who  had  mastered  a  clear  and  definite,  if  narrow, 
creed.  His  sincerity,  his  piety,  his  energy  and  his  wonderful 
powers  of  organization,  created  not  merely  bands  of  devoted 
followers,  but  a  church  which,  according  to  the  ideas  of  those 
who  belonged  to  it,  was  a  reformation  and  a  purification  of  the 
existing  Christianity.  Within  it  asceticism  was  practised  in  a 
manner  hitherto  unknown  within  Christianity.  No  married 
persons  could  ever  rise  to  be  more  than  catechumens,  and  mem- 
bers were  required  to  abstain  from  all  sexual  relations  ;  rigid 
laws  about  meats  and  di'inks  were  laid  down  and  enforced  ; 
martyrdom  was  to  be  welcomed,  not  shimned,  and  the  hatred 
of  the  great  mass  of  their  fellow-Chiistians  was  an  additional 
burden  to  be  endured.  Wherever  Christianity  had  spread 
the  followers  of  Marcion  appeared,  formed  themselves  into 
separate  churches,  with  the  same  ceremonies  of  worship,  the 
same  ecclesiastical  organization,  or  one  very  similar,  the  same, 
if  not  greater,  strictness  of  moral  living,  and  an  intenser  joy  in 
martyrdom.  The  dogmatic  unity  of  the  Church,  if  it  ever  had 
been  truly  and  thoroughly  one,  was  broken.  Other  bodies  of 
Christians,  with  separate  organizations,  appeared  standing  be- 
tween the  Marcionite  and  the  parent  churches,  and  pagans  could 


ALLEGORISING  EXEGESIS  221 

sneer  at  a  divided  Christianity  and  ask  the  Christians  which 
God,  they  who  preached  His  Unity,  really  worshipped  ?  ' 

Can  we  wonder  then,  that  in  face  of  these  anxieties  the  leaders 
of  the  Christian  churches  felt  the  need  for  a  closer  fellowship 
and  a  firmer  grasp  of  what  they  believed  to  be  the  verities  of 
the  faith  ?  Irenaeus  voiced  the  clamant  need  of  the  Church. 
His  rallying  cry  is  familiar  enough.  It  is  one  which  has  arisen 
always  in  such  crises.  It  was  practically  this  :  "  Back  to  the 
Christ  of  history :  back  to  the  fixed  verities  of  the  Christian 
faith." 

But  how  was  it  possible  to  get  back  to  these  fixed  verities 
of  the  Christian  faith,  and  by  a  path  that  all  could  tread  ?  All 
the  more  important  writings  of  the  New  Testament  were  already 
recognized  as  Scripture  in  the  West,  but  the  prevaihng  attitude 
of  mind  was  towards  allegorising,  and  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas 
shows  how  unhistorical  this  mystical  interpretation  could  be- 
come. If  Barnabas  could  find  a  text  and  proof  for  the  Cross 
and  for  Baptism  in  Psalm  i.  3,"  the  Gospels  might  be  drawn 
upon  for  proofs  as  satisfactory  for  the  Gnostic  metaphysical 
mythology.  Tertullian  confesses  as  much,  and  naively  remarks 
that  he  does  not  risk  contradiction  in  saying  that  the  Scriptures 
were  "  even  arranged  "  by  the  will  of  God  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  furnish  materials  for  heretics.^  The  bent  of  the  pliilosophy 
of  the  day  was  to  dissolve  facts  into  theories,  and  the  Platonists 
in  their  expositions  of  Homer  had  taught  orthodox  Christian 
and  Gnostic  aUke  their  elusive  methods  of  exegesis.  Then, 
apart  from  the  impossibihty  of  using  a  sound  exegesis  which 

'  Compare  especially  Origen,  Contra  Celsiis,  v.  59-64. 

2  "  Again  He  saith  in  another  prophet  '  The  man  who  doeth  these 
things  shall  be  like  a  tree  planted  by  the  courses  of  waters,  which  shall 
yield  its  fruit  in  due  season  ;  and  his  leaf  shall  not  fade,  and  all  he  doeth 
shall  prosper.  .  .  .  Mark  how  He  has  described  at  once  both  the  water 
and  the  cross.  For  these  words  imply,  Blessed  are  they  who,  placing 
their  trust  in  the  cross,  have  gone  down  into  the  water  ;  for,  says  He,  they 
shall  receive  their  reward  in  due  time :  then  He  declares,  I  will  recom- 
pense them.'  "     Epistle  of  Barnuhns,  xi. 

3  De  Praescriplio7ie  Hacrelicorum,  39  ;    cf.  19. 


222      THE   FALL  OF  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

yielded  a  common  method  of  interpretation,  the  question  of  what 
was  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament  Scriptm^e  was  one  of  the 
matters  in  dispute  between  the  organized  Christian  Church 
and  those  behevers  in  Christ  who  were  outside  its  pale.  Marcion 
had  a  canon  of  his  own,  as  we  have  already  seen ;  the  various 
Gnostics  had  theirs,  not  always  the  same — for  what  we  call  the 
apocryphal  Gospels  and  Acts  were  received  by  many.  Nor 
could  an  appeal  be  made  to  any  short  common  creed.  There 
was  none  as  yet  common  to  all  Christendom,  although  what  Ues 
at  the  basis  of  the  Apostles^  Creed  was  received  throughout  the 
Church  and  had  become  fixed  in  a  form  of  words  in  the  West^^ 
Various  Gnostics  had  their  creeds  differing  from  each  other, 
and  to  them  they  appealed.^  Disputes  also  existed  about  the 
true  apostolic  tradition  ;  whether  Jesus  had  or  had  not  entrusted 
His  apostles  with  a  secret  doctrine  in  addition  to  what  He 
openly  taught,  and  whether  that  "  secret  teaching  "  had  been 
communicated  to  any  by  the  apostles,  and  if  so  to  whom.^ 

^  The  Apostles'  Creed  in  its  earlier  form,  the  old  Roman  Creed,  can  be 
traced  as  far  back  as  150  a.d. 

2  We  can  reconstruct  the  creed  of  the  Gnostic  Apelles  from  Hippolytus 
{Reftitation  of  all  the  Heresies,  vii,  26) ;  "  We  beUeve,  That  Christ  de- 
scended from  the  Power  above,  from  the  Good,  and  that  He  is  the  Son 
of  the  Good ;  That  He  was  not  born  of  a  Virgin  and  that  when  He  did 
appear,  He  was  not  devoid  of  flesh  ;  That  He  formed  His  Body  by  taking 
portions  of  it  from  the  substance  of  the  universe,  i.e.  hot  and  cold,  moist 
and  diy  ;  That  He  received  cosmical  powers  in  the  Body,  and  lived  for 
the  time  He  did  in  the  world  ;  That  He  was  crucified  by  the  Jews  and  died  ; 
That  being  raised  again  after  three  days  He  appeared  to  His  disciples  ; 
That  he  showed  them  the  prints  of  the  nails  and  (the  wound)  in  His  side, 
being  desirous  of  persuading  them  that  He  was  no  phantom,  but  was 
present  in  the  flesh  ;  That  after  He  had  shown  them  His  Flesh  He  re- 
stored it  to  the  earth  ;  That  after  He  had  once  more  loosed  the  chains 
of  His  Body  He  gave  back  heat  to  what  is  hot,  cold  to  what  is  cold,  moisture 
to  what  is  moist  and  dryness  to  what  is  dry  ;  That  in  this  condition  he 
departed  to  the  Good  Father,  leaving  the  Seed  of  Life  in  the  world  for 
those  who  through  His  disciples  should  beUeve  in  Him."  Cf.  TertuUian, 
Adversus  Marcion,  i.  1  (Marcion's  regvla  fidei) ;  De  Praescriptione  Haere- 
ticorum,  42  ;    Irenaeus,  Against  Heresies,  HI.  xi.  3. 

^  The  Pistis  Sophia,  the  only  complete  Gnostic  treatise  which  has 
decended  to  us,  has  a  great  deal  to  say  about  this  secret  teaching  of  our 


THE  SUGGESTION  OF  IREN.EUS  223 

Amidst  this  medley  of  beliefs  and  assertions  Irenaeus  assured 
the  faithful  that  it  was  easy  to  know  what  the  simple  and  fixed 
verities  of  the  Christian  faith  really  were.  They  are  everywhere 
the  same.  Ask  Christians  of  the  most  different  classes,  whether 
cultured  inhabitants  of  centres  of  civilization  or  nomade  Scy- 
thians roaming  over  the  steppes  in  waggons  and  unable  to  read 
or  to  write,  and  the  answer  will  be  everywhere  the  same.  He 
describes  what  the  answer  will  be,  and  gives  a  short  string  of 
sentences  resembling  the  Afostles'  Creeds  The  Church,  he 
says,  though  scattered  throughout  the  world,  preserves  this 
creed,  "  as  if  it  were  some  precious  deposit  in  an  excellent  vessel."^ 
Varieties  of  language  do  not  interfere  with  the  meaning  of  the 
truths  of  the  faith ;  "  the  churches  which  have  been  planted 
in  Germany  do  not  believe  nor  hand  down  anything  different, 
nor  do  those  in  Gaul,  nor  those  in  the  East,  nor  those  in  Egypt."  ^ 
He  declares  that  the  sentences  which  he  gives  as  containing 
the  simple  verities  of  the  Christian  belief  can  be  proved  to  be 
what  he  has  said,  because  there  are  in  the  Christian  Church 
successive  generations  of  men  who  go  back  to  the  time  of  the 
apostles  who  were  the  companions  of  Jesus.  His  argument 
is  always  :  I  know  a  man  who  knew  a  man  who  knew  an 
apostle.'* 

There  are  in  the  various  churches  scattered  throughout  the 
world  successions  of  men  who  have  been  taught  generation  by 

Lord  and  how  it  was  given  and  transmitted  and  was  the  teaching  which 
the  author  of  the  book  accepted.  The  book  has  been  translated  into 
EngUsh  by  G.  R.  S.  Mead  (1896).  Compare  Irenaeus,  Against  Heresies, 
III.  ii.  1. 

^  Against  Heresies,  I.  x.  1  ;    cf.  III.  iv.  2. 

2  III.  xxiv.  1  ;  elsewhere,  "  The  apostles,  like  a  rich  man  in  a  bank 
lodged  in  the  hands  (of  the  Church)  most  copiously  all  things  pertaining 
to  the  truth  :  so  that  every  man,  whosoever  will,  can  draw  from  her  the 
water  of  life  "  (III.  iv.  1). 

3  Against  Heresies,  I.  x.  2. 

4  The  sentence  condenses  his  argument ;  but  it  is  interesting  to  remem- 
ber that  he  uses  the  word  himself : — "  I  have  heard  from  an  aged  elder 
who  had  heard  it  from  those  who  had  seen  the  apostles,  and  from  thoso 
who  had  been  their  disciples  "  (IV.  xxvii.  1). 


224      THE   FALL   OF   THE   PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

generation  what  the  fixed  verities  of  the  Christian  faith  are. 
In  some  of  these  churches  the  successions  go  back  to  the  times 
of  the  primitive  apostles  themselves,  who  taught  the  first  genera- 
tion of  believers.  If  questionings  arise,  if  speculations  trouble, 
if  plain  men  are  bewildered  by  the  gorgeous  phantasy  of  Gnostic 
theosophy  or  by  the  sincere  if  narrow  logic  of  Marcion,  if  the 
canon  of  New  Testament  Scripture  is  doubtful  or  if  the  original 
documents  have  been  tampered  with,  if  the  allegorising  exe- 
gesis makes  the  whole  of  Scripture  of  doubtful  interpretation, 
there  is  a  commn-sense  remedy  for  all  these  evils  and  one  which 
has  been  constantly  used.  Apply  to  the  men  who  are  in  the 
best  position  for  knowing  what  the  apostles  really  taught,  what 
words  they  used,  and  what  meaning  they  attached  to  these 
words.  "  If  there  arise  a  dispute  about  any  ordinary  question 
among  us,  should  we  not  have  recourse  to  the  most  ancient 
churches  with  whom  the  apostles  held  constant  intercourse, 
and  learn  from  them  what  is  certain  and  clear  with  regard  to  it 
it  ?  "  ^  This  is  no  new  means  of  arriving  at  the  truth,  he  urges. 
It  is  what  is  constantly  done.  There  are  believers  in  Christ 
who  cannot  read,  v/ho  cannot  make  use  of  any  written  docu- 
ments which  the  apostles  have  left,  but  who  "  have  salvation 
written  in  their  hearts  by  the  Spirit,  without  paper  or  inlc," 
and  who  have  received  orally  the  ancient  tradition,  and  have 
become  very  wise  in  doctrine,  morals,  and  tenor  of  life.^ 

Irenaeus  proposed  to  give  to  this  old  and  much  used  method 
of  finding  out  what  were  the  primary  and  fixed  verities  of  the 
Christian  faith  the  sanction  of  an  ecclesiastical  usage.  Here 
we  meet  for  the  first  time,  outside  the  Roman  Church,  the 
thought  of  a  succession  from  the  apostles  in  the  office-bearers 
of  the  local  churches ;  but  it  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
"  gigantic  figment  "  of  an  ApostoHc  Succession  which  dominates 
the  Anglican  and  is  a  law  in  the  Roman  Church  of  the  present 
day.  It  is  meant  to  be  a  simple  and  clear  way  to  find  out  what 
the  real  faith  of  the  Church  is  in  a  time  of  more  than  usual 
'  Against  Heresies,  III,  iv.  1.  ^  Ibid.  iv.  2. 


IRENAEUS  AND  TERTULLIAN  225 

perplexity.     This    is    evident    from    the    apphcation    Irenaeus 
makes  of  his  principle,  and  it  is  also  clear  from  the  manner  in 
which  Tertullian,  who  adopts  the  principle,  illustrates  the  use 
to  be  made  of  it.     "  Run  over  the  apostolic  churches,  in  which 
the  very  chairs  {cathedrae)  of  the  apostles  still  guard  their  places 
{suis  locis  fraesident),  where  their  own  unmutilated  {authenticae) 
writings  are  read,  uttering  the  voice  and  representing  the  face 
of  each  of  them  individually.     Achaia  is  near  you ;  you  find 
Corinth.     You  are  not  far  from  Macedonia  ;  you  have  Philippi ; 
you  have  the  Thessalonians.    You  are  able  to  cross  to  Asia  ;  you 
find  Ephesus.     You  are  close  upon  Italy  :  you  have  Rome."  ^ 
In  all  these  churches  apostles  once  taught;    to  all  these  churches 
they  sent  epistles  which  are  to  this  day  read ;  their  voices 
are  still  living  there,  and  their  very  presence  seems  still  to  haunt 
them.     From  their  days  until  now,  such  is  the  argument,  men 
with  the  gifts  of  leadership  and  of  wisdom  had  been  office-bearers 
in  these  communities  and  in  others  founded,  if  not  by  apostles, 
by   "  apostolic   men "  ;  ^  each   generation   had   been   carefully 
trained  in  the  apostolic  doctrine   by  their  predecessors,   and 
they  were  able  to  judge  what  the  simple  verities  of  the  Christian 
faith  were.     What  Irenaeus  proposes  is  that  the  ofiice-bearers 
who  are  in  the  succession  are  to  be  made  the  judges  of  what 
wholesome  Christian  teaching  is.     It  is  the  fact  of  an  uninter- 
rupted succession  of  responsible  men  that  is  the  natural  and 
historical  guarantee  that  the  doctrines  once  transmitted  to  the 
fathers  have  been  retained  in  the  memory  of  the  sons.     For 
some  generations  it  is  probable  that  individual  men  had  pre- 
sided at  the  head  of  the  Christian  communities,  and  Irenaeus 
might  have  simply  spoken  of  a  succession  of  bishops,  but  he 
does  not ;  it  is  the  whole  body  of  elders  and  bishops  that  Irenaeus 
has  in  view.     This  can  be  seen  only  when  all  his  allusions  to 
the  matter  are  read.     They  will  be  found  in  the  footnote.^ 

'  TciluUian,  De  Praescriptione  Ilaercticonun,  xxxvi.       ^  Ibid,  xxxii. 
3  "  Wlien  Avo  refer  them  to  that  tradition  which  originates  from  the 
apostles  and  which  is  preserved  by  means  of  the  successions  of  ciders  in 
CM.  15 


226      THE   FALL   OF   THE   PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

Tertullian,  who  is  twenty  years  later  than  Irenaeus,  always 
speaks  of  successions  of  bishops  or  chief  pastors.^  In  both  cases, 
however,  the  main  thought  is  that  there  are  in  the  various 
local  churches  actual  successions  of  men  who,  because  these 
successions  go  back  to  the  actual  times  of  the  apostles,  can  be 

the  Churches,"  Irenaeus,  Against  Heresies,  III.  ii.  2.  "  It  is  therefore 
within  the  power  of  all,  in  every  Church,  who  may  wish  to  see  the  truths 
to  contemplate  the  tradition  of  the  apostles  manifested  throughout  the 
whole  world ;  and  we  are  in  a  position  to  reckon  up  those  who,  by  the 
apostles,  were  instituted  bishops  in  the  Churches,  and  the  succession  of 
these  men  to  our  own  times,"  III.  iii.  1 .  Irenaeus  then  gives  the  succession 
of  bishops  in  Rome,  and  proceeds  :  "In  this  order  and  by  this  succession, 
the  ecclesiastical  tradition  from  the  apostles  and  the  preaching  of  the  truth 
have  come  down  to  us,"  III.  iii.  3.  "  Wherefore  it  is  incumbent  to  obey 
the  elders  who  are  in  the  Church — those  who,  I  have  shown,  possess  the 
succession  from  the  apostles  ;  those  who,  together  with  the  succession  of 
the  oversight  (episcopate)  have  received  the  charisma  of  truth  according 
to  the  good  pleasure  of  the  Father ;  but  to  hold  in  suspicion  others  who 
depart  from  the  primitive  succession  and  assemble  themselves  together 
in  any  place  whatsoever,"  IV.  xxvi.  2.  "  It  behoves  us  to  adhere  to  those, 
who,  as  I  have  already  observed,  do  hold  the  doctrine  of  the  apostles, 
and  who,  together  with  the  order  of  the  presbyterate  (presbyterii  ordine), 
display  sound  speech  and  blameless  conduct  for  the  confirmation  and 
correction  of  others,"  IV.  xxvi.  4.  "  Such  elders  does  the  Church  nourish, 
of  whom  also  the  prophet  says  :  '  I  will  give  thy  rulers  in  peace,  and  thy 
bishops  in  righteousness,'  .  .  .  where  therefore  the  gifts  of  the  Lord  have 
been  placed,  there  it  behovco  us  to  learn  the  truth— from  those  who  pos- 
sess that  succession  of  the  Church  which  is  from  the  ajiostles,"  IV.  xxvi. 
5.  "  As  I  have  heard  from  a  certain  elder,  who  had  heard  it  from  those 
who  had  seen  the  apostles  and  from  those  who  had  been  their  disciijles," 
IV.  xxvii.  1.  "  Then  every  word  shall  also  seem  consistent  to  him,  if 
he  for  his  part  read  the  scriptures  diUgently  in  company  with  those  who 
are  the  elders  in  the  Church,  among  whom  is  the  apostolic  doctrine,  as 
I  have  pointed  out,"  IV.  xxxii.  1.  "  Agnitio  vera  est  apostohcorum 
doctrinae,  et  antiquus  ecclesiae  status  in  universo  niundo  et  character 
corporis  Christi  secundum  succcssiones  episcoporum  quibus  ilh  eam,  quae 
in  unoquoque  loco  est,  ecclesiam  tradiderunt :  quae  pervenit  usque  ad 
nos  custoditione  sine  fictione  scripturarum  tractatio  plenissima,  neque 
additamentum  neque  ablationem  recipiens,"  IV.  xxxiii.  8.  Eusebius 
quotes  Irenaeus  {Ecclesiastical  History,  V.  xx.  4)  addi-essing  a  friend, 
Florinus,  who  had  lapsed  into  Valentinianism,  "  These  opmions,  those 
elders  who  preceded  us,  and  who  a\  ere  conversant  A\ith  the  apostles  did 
not  hand  down  to  thee." 

'  Tcrtullian,  De  Praescriptione  Haereticoruin,  32,  36. 


THE  CHARISMA  VERITATIS  OF  OFFICE-BEARERS     227 

said  to  have  known  men  who  knew  apostles  or  apostohc  men,- 
and  who  are  therefore  able  to  know  what  the  apostles  really- 
meant  to  teach.  With  both  writers  the  succession  they  speak 
of  as  a  guarantee  of  the  correctness  of  the  Cliurch's  creed  and 
as  a  pledge  of  her  dogmatic  unity,  is  an  historical  succession, 
and  the  conception  is  a  matter  of  fact  and  not  of  dogma. 

Yet  with  both  something  is  added  to  this  purely  historical 
conception  of  the  succession.  There  is  an  addition,  the  thought 
somewhat  indefinitely  formulated  that  these  men  who  are 
office-bearers  in  the  succession  have  a  charisma  veritatis  because 
of  their  official  position.^     The  thought  is  not  very  strongly 

'^  Against  Heresies,  IV.  xxvi,  2  : — "  certum  veritatis  charisma."  In 
IV.  xxvi.  5,  Irenaeus  speaks  of  the  "  gifts  "  of  C4od  bestowed  uiron  ttie 
Church  in  the  apostles,  prophets  and  teachers,  i.e.  the  old  prophetic  ministry 
always  believed  to  have  been  specially  charismatic,  and  then  adds,  "where 
therefore  the  '  gifts  of  the  Lord '  have  been  placed,  there  it  behoves 
us  to  learn  the  truth  from  those  who  possess  that  succession  of  the  Church 
which  is  from  the  apostles  "  ;  and  in  the  preface  to  Book  III.  he  applies 
to  the  apostles,  and  presumably  to  those  who  are  in  the  succession  from 
them,  the  words  of  our  Lord  in  addressing  the  Seventy,  "  He  that  heareth 
you,  heareth  Me  ;  and  he  that  despiseth  you,  despiseth  Me  and  Him  that 
sent  Me  "  (Luke  x.  16  ;  cf.  Matt.  x.  40).  At  the  same  time  it  is  very 
doubtful  if  the  thought  of  an  official  charisma  veritaiis  is  definitely  and 
distinctly  before  the  minds  of  either  Irenaeus  or  Tertullian  in  the  sense 
of  something  which  belongs  to  the  office-bearers  exclusively  and  as  some- 
thing coming  to  them  from  their  office.  Both  writers  were  tpo  strongly 
posessed  with  the  idea  that  the  whole  Church  is  the  sphere  of  the  Spirit 
to  Umit  the  action  of  the  Spirit  of  Truth  to  the  office-bearers,  and  the 
idea  that  a  charisma  was  something  which  was  given  to  the  individual 
and  not  to  the  office  was  powerfully  felt  not  only  in  their  time  but  much 
later.  Irenaeus  says  expressly  :  "  '  For  in  the  Church,'  it  is  said,  '  God 
hath  placed  apostles,  prophets  and  teachers,'  and  all  the  other  means 
through  Avhich  the  Spirit  works  ;  of  which  all  those  are  not  partakers 
who  do  not  join  themselves  to  the  Church,  but  defraud  themselves  of  life 
through  their  perverse  opinions  and  infamous  behaviour.  For  where 
the  Church  is  there  is  the  S^iirit  of  God  ;  and  tchere  the  Spirit  of  God  is 
there  is  the  Church  and  every  kind  of  grace  ;  but  the  Spirit  is  truth  "  (III. 
xxiv.  1).  The  Spirit  of  Truth  was  in  the  whole  Cliurch  and  not  confined 
to  any  class  in  it ;  and  it  is  possible  to  argue  that  according  to  Irenaeus 
the  special  charisma  of  those  in  office  was  the  advantage  that  their  position 
in  the  succession  gave  them  of  knowing  the  truth  transmitted.  Both 
Irenaeus  and  Tertullian  asserted  that  members  within  the  Church  might 


228      THE  FALL  OF  THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

dwelt  on  by  Irenaeus ;  but  it  is  present  in  one  or  two  passages 
quoted  in  the  note  below,  and  in  the  second  it  is  plain  that 
whatever  use  he  makes  of  it  with  reference  to  office-bearers 
what  he  has  in  his  mind  is  the  "  gift "  which  in  earher  days 
was  exclusively  associated  with  the  prophetic  ministry/ 

It  is  evident  that  this  new  official  task  of  guaranteeing  the 
true  apostolic  teaching,  which  is  laid  upon  the  office-bearers 
in  general,  and  on  the  pastors  or  bishops  in  particular,  must 
have  had  a  very  restraining  effect  upon  the  prophetic  ministry, 
and  on  the  unlimited  freedom  of  exhortation  which  character- 
ized the  churches  in  the  first  century  and  in  many  decades  of 
the  second  century.    The  office-bearers  who  were  in  the  succession 

and  did  possess  the  "  gift "  of  true  prophecy  (Irenaeus,  Against  Heresies, 
I.  xiii.  4  ;  II.  xxxii.  4 ;  xxxiii.  3  ;  III.  xi.  9  ;  V.  vi.  1),  and  TertuUian's 
so-called  Montanist  period  is  simply  his  recoil  from  where  he  perceived  this 
theory  of  an  official  charisma  veritatis  was  leading  him  (cf.  specially  his  De 
Pvdicitia).  Even  in  Cj^prian's  days  this  idea  of  an  official  inspiration 
was  not  accepted  without  some  misgivings ;  and  although  the  bishops  at 
his  North  African  Councils  in  recording  their  votes  gave  their  opinion  and 
that  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  idea  that  the  inspiration  was  after  all  personal 
is  evidenced  in  the  part  which  dreams  and  visions  play  (Epist.  Ivii.  5). 

^  This  indefinite  thought  (for  uith  Irenaeus  it  is  indefinite)  that  in  ad- 
dition to  the  natural  means  of  knowing  the  true  Christian  doctrine  which 
comes  from  being  in  the  regular  succession  of  office-bearers  in  places 
where  the  apostles  themselves  taught,  there  is  a  charisma  veritatis  which  is 
official,  is  the  germ  of  the  Romanist  doctrine  of  tradition  ;  and  although 
the  road  maj'  be  long  between  the  cerium  veritatis  charisma  and  the  utter- 
ance of  Pope  Pius  IX.,  "  lo  sono  la  trachzione,"  the  milestones  may  be 
marked.  Some  Anglicans  make  much  of  the  thought  that  there  is  a 
charisma  veritatis  attached  to  the  succession  of  office-bearers  (they  say 
bishops),  and  put  a  great  deal  more  into  it  than  Irenaeus  ever  intended  ; 
but  it  is  somewhat  dangerous  for  their  own  theories  to  do  so.  It  is  part 
of  the  conception  of  Irenaeus  that  the  Cliurch  which  has  the  surest  claim 
to  know  what  arc  the  verities  of  the  Christian  faith  is  the  Church  in  Rome, 
and  he  insists  that  every  other  Cliurch  ought  to  agree  with  the  Christian 
society  in  the  capital  city.  "It  is  a  matter  of  necessity,"  he  saj's,  "  that 
every  Church  should  agree  with  this  Cliurch  propter  potiorem  principali- 
tatem  "  (III.  iii.  2),  and  however  the  words  qyropter  principalitatem  be 
translated  the  idea  in  the  mind  of  Irenaeus  is  the  simple  historical  one  that 
the  two  greatest  apostles  both  taught  there  and  that  their  teaching  had 
been  remembered  by  means  of  the  succession  of  office-bearers  ;  place  the 
dogmatic  instead  of  the  historical  idea  and  you  have  papal  infalhbiUty. 


CONFORMING   TO   THE   USAG^ES   OF   SOCIETY     229 

were  now  made  the  judges  of  what  ought  to  bo  taught  to  the 
people  in  exhortation  and  in  instruction  ;  and  they  were  there- 
fore set  in  the  position  of  judging  all  who  undertook  the  function 
which  was  the  pecuhar  work  of  the  prophetic  ministry.  Be- 
sides, it  was  suggested  that  the  peculiar  veritatis  charisma,  the 
"  gift  "  which  gave  them  their  unique  and  distinguished  position, 
belonged  to  the  office-bearers  of  the  churches  as  well  as  the 
"  gift  "  of  government.  The  indications  are  that  the  suggestion 
of  Irenaeus  had  been  acted  on  long  before  he  placed  it  on  record. 
Whenever  it  came  to  be  the  accepted  rule  in  the  Church  the 
revolution  became  an  accompUshed  fact ;  and  the  men  who  had 
been  supreme  (the  prophets),  and  whom  to  disobey  had  been 
accounted  an  unpardonable  sin,  became  the  servants  of  the 
office-bearers  whose  superiors  they  once  had  been. 

The  need  for  some  authority  to  express  the  dogmatic  unity 
of  the  Church,  and  the  idea  that  this  authority  lay  in  the  office- 
bearers of  the  churches,  must  have  placed  the  prophetic  ministry 
in  an  inferior  position  and  tended  to  destroy  it  altogether.  For 
though  the  position  assigned  to  the  heads  of  the  churches  meant 
practically  that  they  were  to  be  the  judges  of  what  the  proper 
instruction  was,  and  did  not  necessarily  mean  that  they  were 
in  every  case  to  take  the  instruction  in  their  own  hands,  still 
that  was  bound  to  come  out  of  the  idea  in  the  end.  The  office- 
bearers, and  especially  the  bishops,  would  inevitably  become 
the  instructors  as  well  as  the  judges  of  the  instruction  that  was 
given. 

Another  set  of  circumstances  was  working  for  the  downfall 
of  the  prophetic  ministry.  The  Rescript  of  the  Emperor  Ha- 
drian to  Minucius  Fundanus,  who  was  Proconsul  of  Asia  some- 
time about  124  A.D.,  v/as  rightly  regarded  by  the  Christians 
as  the  beginning  of  an  era   of  comparative   toleration.*    The 

^  On  this  Rescript  of  Hadrian's  compare  Ramsay,  The  Church  in  the 
Roman  Empire  (1893),  pp.  320  ff,  ;  Lightfoot,  Apostolic  Fathers  :  8. 
Ignatius,  8.  Pohjcarp  (1885),  i.  pp.  4G0-4  ;  Moiumsen,  Der  Rdigionsfrevel 
nach  romischen  Rccht  in   tlie  Histor.  Zeitschrifi,  vol.  L\iv.  (xxviii.),  pt.  iii. 


230      THE  FALL   OF  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

character  of  the  great  Emperor,  his  curiosity,  half  cynical  half 
hopeful,'  about  all  kinds  of  religious  faiths,  made  them  expect 
great  things  from  him.  Christian  literature  struck  a  bolder 
note.  The  writings  of  the  apologists  began  to  appear,  who 
demanded  on  behalf  .of  their  brethren  to  be  treated  like  their 
fellow-subjects,  free  to  live,  so  long  as  they  did  not  transgress 
against  the  laws  of  morality,  under  the  shelter  pi  the  wide- 
spreading  fax  Romanorum.  Christianity  found  a  voice  and 
demanded  to  be  heard,  pleading  for  the  toleration  which  was 
granted  to  all  other  religions.  The  earliest  of  these  writers 
was  probably  Quadratus.  Aristides,  Justin  Martyr,  Miltiades, 
Melito,  Tatian,  Athenagoras  and  others  followed  in  succession. 
From  our  modern  standpoint  these  documents  are  but  feeble 
expositions  of  the  Christian  faith  ;  TertulUan  alone,  with  his 
lofty  elevation  of  sentiment  and  his  stern  moral  enthusiasm, 
seems  to  be  an  apologist  for  all  time.  But  if  these  writings  are 
looked  upon,  as  they  ought  to  be,  in  the  light  of  pleas  for  some 
way  of  living  quietly  and  peaceably  under  the  imperial  rule,^ 
they  are  very  interesting  documents.  They  almost  invariably 
take  the  same  line  of  argument.  Christianity,  they  say,  can 
have  no  quarrel  with  good  government ;  its  morals  are  purer 
than  those  of  paganism,  and  are  therefore  a  better  protection 
to  the  State  ;  Christians  cannot  pray  to  the  Emperor,  but  they 
always  pray  for  him  ;  they  are  and  they  mean  to  be  loyal  citizens 
of  the  great  commonwealth  to  which  they  belong.  It  is  strange 
to  observe  an  undertone  of  admiration  for  the  imperial  rule 
under  which  they  live,  and  a  conviction  that  all  would  be  well 
if  the  emperors  could  only  learn  what  Christianity  really  is,* 

p.  389  ff.  ;  Harnack,  Die  Chronologic  der  altchristlichen  Literatur  (1897), 
i.  p.  25G,  n.  6.  These  authors  all  believe  in  the  genuineness  of  the  Rescript. 
Keim  and  others  reject  it  on  very  superficial  grounds.  The  Rescript  itself 
is  to  be  found  at  the  end  of  the  First  Apology  of  Justin  Martyr. 

'  "  Grant  us  the  same  rights,  we  ask  for  nothing  more,  as  those  who 
persecute  us,"  Athenagoras,  Plea  for  the  Christians,  3. 

2  Athenagoras,  Plea,  etc.,  37  ;  Theophilus,  To  Aiitolycus,  i.  11  ;  Ter- 
tuUian,  Apology,  1  ;    "If  in  this  case  alone  you  are  ashamed  or  afraid 


CONFORMING  TO   THE   USAGES  OF   SOCIETY     231 

and  to  notice  how  they  almost  invariably  distinguish  the  im- 
perial ruler  from  those  who  persecute  them.  Tatian  seems 
even  to  discern  that  there  is  a  universal  humane  aim  in  the 
imperial  rule,  that  it  has  proclaimed  in  some  shadowy  way  the 
brotherhood  of  mankind,  that  there  is  a  measure  of  resemblance 
between  the  empire  and  Christianity,  and  that  the  two  ought  to 
be  allies  and  not  foes.'^  They  all  look  forward  to  a  possible 
accommodation  between  the  imperial  government  and  the 
Christian  societies.  Tertullian  indeed  pleads  that  the  Christian 
churches  ought  to  be  allowed  to  enrol  themselves  as  associations 
for  practising  a  lawful  religion. 

But  the  more  thoughtful  and  politic  among  the  leaders  of 
the  Christian  societies  could  not  help  seeing  that  if  there  was 
to  be  any  accommodation  with  the  empire  there  must  be  some 
change  on  the  part  of  the  Christian  societies,  and  that  Christians 
must  to  some  extent  change  their  habits  of  life  if  they  were  to 
mingle  more  freely  with  their  fellow-men  who  were  not  Christians. 
In  the  earlier  times  Christianity  was  held  to  be  a  "  mode  of  life," 
to  use  the  expression  of  Tatian  ;  "  Christians  were  men  and  women 
who  had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  this  world  ;  who  were  not 
to  conform  themselves  to  it  in  any  way,  and  were  not  to  mingle 
in  its  pursuits  nor  in  its  pleasures.  They  were  little  separate 
secluded  societies,  awaiting  on  the  threshold  the  opening  of 
the  new  heavens  and  the  new  earth.  The  earliest  Christians 
were  content  with  this,  and  asked  for  nothing  more. 

The  middle  of  the  second  century,  however,  witnessed  a  change 
which  may  be  best  indicated  by  saying  that  the  Christian 
faith  was  attracting  to  it  multitudes  of  people  drawn  from  all 
classes    and    ranks    in    society — imperial    officials,    merchants, 


to  exercise  your  authority  in  making  public  inquiry  A\ntli  the  carefulness 
which  becomes  justice." 

^  The  design  of  Christianity  is  to  put  an  end  to  slavery  and  to  "rescue 
us  from  a  multiplicity  of  rulers  and  fiom  ten  thousand  tjaants  "  (Address 
to  the  Greeks,  xxix.)  ;  "there  ought  to  be  one  common  poUty  for  all" 
(xxviii.).  ^  Tatian,  Address  to  the  Greeks,  xhi. 


232       THE   FALL   OF  THE   PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

lawyers,  men  of  culture  and  leisure.  It  was  gathering  round 
it  men  from  the  camp  and  from  the  court,  men  who  were  in 
the  midst  of  the  bustle  of  life  and  who  meant  to  remain  there. 
Tertullian  might  prove  that  no  soldier  could  be  a  Christian, 
and  collections  of  ecclesiastical  canons  of  a  still  later  date  might 
corroborate  him,^  but  he  himself  gives  evidence  that  there  must 
have  been  many  Christians  in  the  army.^  He  speaks  of  the 
way  in  which  the  Christians  mingled  with  their  pagan  neigh- 
bours. "  We  sojourn  with  you  in  the  world,  abjuring  neither 
forum,  nor  shambles,  nor  bath,  nor  booth  nor  workshop,  nor 
iim,  nor  weekly  market,  nor  any  other  place  of  commerce.  We 
sail  with  you,  we  fight  with  you,  and  till  the  ground  with  you ; 
and  in  like  manner  we  unite  with  you  in  your  traffickings."  ^ 
A  question  of  the  utmost  gravity  faced  the  leaders  of  the 
Christian  societies.  Should  all  the  new  classes  of  converts  be 
permitted  to  remain  in  their  callings,  and — for  this  was  the 
question  involved — should  the  Church  accept  the  new  condition 
of  things,  and  begin  to  adapt  itself  to  the  forms  and  conditions 
of  the  world  around  it  ?  Should  it,  as  far  as  conscience  per- 
mitted, respect  the  amenities  of  life,  or  should  it  remain  what 
it  had  hitherto  been — a  communion  of  persons  who  hoped  for 
nothing  from  existing  society,  and  who  lived  altogether  apart 
from  it  ?  Much  could  be  said  on  both  sides.  On  the  one  hand, 
it  could  be  urged  that  Christianity  had  a  world-wide  mission, 
and  that  if  it  could  lay  hold  on  the  organization  of  the  empire 
and  use  it  for  the  extension  of  the  knowledge  of  its  Lord,  it 
was  only  taking  the  path  which  Providence  had  plainly  marked 
out  for  its  progress.  On  the  other  hand,  many  Christians 
discerned  the  temptations  which  lay  in  accepting  this  view 
of  the  Church's  duty. 

'  De  corona  militis ;  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  can.  xiv.  (Riedel,  Die 
Kirchenrechtsquellen  des  Patriarchats  Alexandrien,  p.  207). 

^  Apology,  5  : — "  The  lettei'S  of  Marcus  Aiirelius,  that  most  grave  of  Em- 
perors, ill  v/hich  he  bears  his  testimony  that  that  Germanic  drought  was 
removed  by  the  rains  obtained  through  the  prayers  of  the  Christians  who 
happened  to  be  fighting  under  him."  3  Apology,  42. 


AND  THE   CONSERVATIVE   REVOLT  233 

In  the  end  the  leaders  of  the  Christian  societies  seem  to  have 
spontaneously  and  gradually  come  to  see  that  it  was  their  duty 
to  bring  their  followers  into  what  accommodation  was  possible 
Avith  the  conditions  of  existing  society.  It  was  this  feeling 
that  rendered  the  writings  of  the  apologists  possible.  The 
time  of  enthusiasm  had  passed  away  for  the  great  majority  of 
Christians.  Unimpassioned  conviction  took  the  place  of  the 
earlier  almost  unrestrained  passion  of  faith.  One  can  scarcely 
fancy  Ignatius  of  Antioch  writing  in  the  tone  of  cool  argument 
which  characterises  the  apologists. 

The  change  of  moral  and  intellectual  atmosphere  did  not 
suit  the  prophetic  ministry,  which  had  been  the  enthusiastic 
element  from  the  beginning,  and  had  become  the  element  of 
asceticism.  It  was  unavoidable  that  it  should  lose  its  old  place 
and  its  ancient  power.  Pleasant  things  continued  to  be  said 
about  prophets,  provided  only  they  accepted  a  position  under 
the  office-bearers  of  the  local  churches.  Curious  regulations 
appear  in  some  of  the  ancient  canons,  enjoining  the  people  to 
respect  their  utterances.  In  the  ancient  Syrian  collection 
known  as  the  Tcstamentum  Jesu  Christi,  for  example,^  those  who 
despise  prophecy  are  debarred  from  coming  to  the  Holy  Supper, 
but  the  prophets  were  no  longer  the  superior  ministry  in  the 
churches. 

There  is  also  evidence  leading  us  to  believe  that  the  prophetic 
ministry  had  been  deteriorating.  From  the  very  beginning 
men  had  claimed  to  be  included  within  its  ranks  who  were  not 
true  prophets.  Warnings  against  such  persons  are  to  be  found 
within  the  New  Testament  writings,^  and  they  occur,  and  with 
increasing  strength,  in  ^vriters  of  the  second  century.     We  have 


'  Testatum  Jesu  Christi,  edited  by  Rahman  (1899),  p.  37.  Among  the 
proclamations  made  by  the  deacon  before  the  Eucharistic  service  is : 
Si  quis  prophetas  despicit,  semet  segreget.  The  Testament  also  says  : — Si 
quis  aulcm  verba  prophetica  dicit,  mercedem  hahebit,  p.  79. 

-  Matt.  vii.  15  :  xxiv.  11,  24  ;  Mark  xiii.  22  ;  Acts  xiii.  6  ;  2  Peter  ii.  1 ; 
1  John  iv.  1-3  ;   Rev.  u.  2,  14,  15,  20  ' 


234      THE   FALL   OF   THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

seen  them  in  the  Didache.^  Justin  Martyr  cites  their  presence 
in  the  Church  as  a  proof  that  Christianity  is  the  true  develop- 
ment of  Judaism,  because  the  Christians  have  among  them 
jalse  prophets  as  well  as  true  ones  hke  the  ancient  Israel.^  Hermas 
has  given  expressive  pictures  of  the  true  and  the  false  prophets.^ 
All  this  was  a  sign  of  the  times. 


^  Justin  Martyr,  Dialogue  with  Tryi)ho,  82  ;  Irenaeus,  Against  Heresies, 
I.  xiii.  3  ;  III.  xi,  9  ;  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccles.  V.  xvii.  1-4 ;  Apostolic 
Constitutions,  VII.  xxxii.  ;    VIII.  ii. ;  Didache,  xi.  1,  2,  8. 

2  Dialogue  with  Trypho,lxxxu. : — "For  the  prophetical  gift  remains  with 
us  even  to  the  present  time.  Hence  you  ought  to  understand  that  the 
gifts  formerly  among  your  nation  have  been  transferred  to  us.  And  just 
as  there  were  false  prophets  contemporaneous  with  your  holy  prophets, 
so  there  are  many  false  teachers  among  us,  of  whom  our  Lord  forewarned 
us  to  beware  ;  so  that  in  no  respect  are  we  deficient,  since  we  know  that 
He  foreknew  all  that  would  happen  to  us  after  His  resurrection  from  the 
dead  and  ascension  to  heaven.  For  He  said  that  we  would  be  put  to  death 
and  hated  for  His  Name  sake  ;  and  that  many  false  prophets  and  false 
Christs  would  appear  in  His  name  and  deceive  many  ;  and  so  it  has  come 
about.  For  many  have  taught,  too,  and  even  yet  are  teaching  those 
things  which  proceed  from  the  unclean  teaching  of  the  devil  and  which  are 
put  into  their  hearts." 

3  Hermas,  Pastor,  Maxidata,  xi : — "  He  showed  me  some  men  sitting  on 
a  seat,  and  one  man  sitting  on  a  chair.  And  he  says  to  me,  '  Do  you  see 
the  persons  sitting  on  the  seat  ?  '  'I  do,'  I  said.  '  These,'  he  says,  '  are 
the  faithful,  and  he  who  sits  on  the  chair  is  a  false  prophet,  ruining  the 
minds  of  the  servants  of  God.  It  is  the  doubters,  not  the  faithful,  he 
ruins.'  .  .  .  '  How  then,'  sir,'  I  say,  '  will  a  man  know  which  of  them 
is  the  prophet,  and  which  is  the  false  prophet  ?  '  'I  will  tell  you,'  he 
says,  '  about  both  prophets,  and  then  you  can  test  the  true  and  the  false 
prophet  according  to  my  directions.  Test  the  man  who  has  the  Spirit  of 
God  by  his  Ufe.  For  he  who  has  the  Divine  Spirit  proceeding  from  above, 
is  meek  and  peaceable  and  humble  and  refrains  from  all  iniquity  and  the  vain 
desire  of  this  world  and  contents  himself  with  fewer  wants  than  those  of  other 
men,  and  when  asked  he  makes  no  reply  ;  nor  does  he  speak  privately, 
nor  when  a  man  wishes  the  Spirit  to  speak  does  the  Holy  Spirit  speak, 
but  it  speaks  only  when  God  wishes  it  to  speak.  When,  then,  a  man  having 
the  Divine  Spirit  comes  into  an  assembly  of  righteous  men  who  have  faith 
in  the  Divine  Spirit,  and  this  assembly  of  men  offers  up  prayer  to  God, 
then  the  angel  of  the  prophetic  Spirit,  who  is  destined  for  him,  fills  the 
man ;  and  the  man  being  filled  \nth  the  Holy  Spirit,  speaks  to  the  mul- 
titude as  the  Lord  wishes.  Thus  then  the  Spirit  of  Divinity  becomes 
manifest.     Whatever  power  therefore  comes  from  the  Spirit  of  Di\nnity 


THE  CONSERVATIVE  REVOLT  235 

These  various  influences  combined  to  help  forward  the  re- 
volution which  excluded  the  prophetic  ministry  from  its  earlier 
position  of  supremacy  and  installed  the  local  official  ministry 
in  the  supreme  place  of  rule.  They  worked  slowly  and  surely 
during  the  second  century,  and  especially  during  the  first  half 
of  the  period. 

But  while  this  movement  was  going  on,  and  its  effects  on  the 
prophetic  ministry  were  gradually  manifesting  themselves,  pro- 
testing voices  were  raised.  This  movement  fostered  by  the  official 
ministry  of  the  local  churches  was  a  departure,  it  seemed  to 
many,  from  the  traditions  of  the  Church  which  they  had  in 
reverence  ;  and  it  was  accompanied  by  a  relaxation  of  the  stern 
rule  of  Christian  life  under  which  the  earlier  generations  had 
lived  and  died.  The  prophetic  ministry  had  always  been  con- 
sidered  as  the  direct  gif^^f^ God  to  the  Church.  It  was  the 
ministry  from  above.  It  had  been  placed  by  St.  Paul  second 
only  to  the  apostolate.  Souls  had  been  won  from  heathenism 
through  its  ministrations.  The  lives  of  believers  had  been  braced 
by  it  to  endure  the  hardships  and  persecutions  which  their 
Master  had  foretold  them  would  fall  upon  them,  and  which  they 
had  been  taught  to  regard  as  their  blessed  lot  while  this  life 
lasted.     They  saw  that  with  the  neglect  of  the  prophetic  ministry 

belongs  to  the  Lord.  Hear  then,'  he  says,  '  in  regard  to  the  Spirit  which 
is  earthly  and  empty  and  foolish  and  powerless.  First  the  man  who  seems 
to  have  the  Spirit  exalts  himself,  and  wishes  to  have  the  first  seat,  and  is 
bold  and  impudent  and  talkative,  and  lives  in  the  midst  of  many  luxuries 
and  many  other  delusions,  and  takes  reward  for  his  prophecy  ;  and  if  he 
does  not  receive  rewards  he  does  not  prophesy.  Can  then  the  Divine 
Spirit  take  rewards  and  prophesy  ?  It  is  not  possible  that  the  Spirit 
of  God  should  do  this,  but  prophets  of  this  character  are  possessed  of  an 
earthly  spirit.  Then  it  never  approaches  an  assembly  of  righteous  men 
but  shuns  them.  And  it  associates  with  doubters  and  the  vain,  and 
prophesies  to  them  in  a  corner  and  deceives  them,  speaking  to  them,  ac- 
cording to  their  desires,  mere  empty  words.  .  .  .  Tliis  then  is  the  mode 
of  life  of  both  the  prophets.  Try  by  his  life  and  by  his  deeds  the  man 
who  says  that  he  is  inspired.  But  as  for  you,  trust  the  Spirit  which 
comes  from  God,  and  has  power  ;  but  the  spirit  which  is  empty  and  earthly 
trust  not  at  all,  for  there  in  no  power  in  it ;   it  comes  from  the  devil.' " 


236      THE   FALI.   OF  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

there  went  hand  in  hand  an  attempt  at  conformity  with  the 
world  and  a  relaxation  of  the  more  rigid  rules  of  the  Christian 
life.  It  was  by  no  means  the  worst  kind  of  Christians  who 
called  upon  the  Church  to  halt  in  this  rapid  approach  to  the 
usages  of  the  world,  in  this  relaxation  of  the  severer  maxims 
of  the  Christian  life,  in  this  neglect  or  undervaluing  of  the  pro- 
phetic ministry,  and  in  this  exaltation  of  the  office-bearers  of 
the  local  churches.  They  grew  increasingly  alarmed  and  uneasy 
in  the  presence  of  the  silent  movement  above  described.  It 
was  taking  from  them  some  of  their  most  precious  possessions. 
They  began  to  feel  that  there  was  no  room  for  them  in  the 
Church  which  had  hitherto  sheltered  them.  All  this  was  felt 
most  strongly,  as  was  to  be  expected,  in  the  regions  more  remote 
from  the  great  centres  of  public  life,  where  the  pressure  of 
coming  to  some  terms  with  the  State  v/as  lighter.  The  standard 
of  revolt  was  raised  in  the  mountainous  region  of  Phrygia — a 
land  not  thoroughly  incorporated  within  the  Roman  adminis- 
tration. The  movement  was  headed  by  a  presbyter  or  elder, 
called  Montanus,  and  became  known  as  Montanism.  It  was 
natural  that  the  crisis  should  emerge  in  these  regions  of  Asia. 
No  portion  of  the  empire  was  so  peopled  by  Christians.  Chris- 
tian prophecy  had  flourished  in  the  neighbouring  regions.  The 
daughters  of  Philip  had  lived  in  the  great  city  of  Hierapolis. 
The  Christian  prophets  Quadratus  and  Ammia  had  belonged 
to  Philadelphia."  Attalus  of  Pergamos  had  been  taught  in 
visions.^  Polycarp,  the  most  distinguished  Christian  of  the 
whole  of  Asia,  was  a  prophet.  Ignatius  had  exhibited  his 
prophetic  gifts  in  Philadelphia.^  On  the  other  hand,  if  the 
country  had  produced  many  Christian  prophets,  its  churches 
had  been  the  earliest  to  organize  themselves  under  the  three- 
fold ministry.  The  prophetic  and  the  local  ministries  confronted 
each  other  there  as  they  did  nowhere  else. 

This  Phrygian  movement  was  the  centre  and  exaggeration 

'  Eusebius,  Ecclesiastical  History,  V.  xvii.  3.       -  Ibid.  V.  iii.  2. 
3  Epistle  to  the  PJiiladelphians,  7. 


THE  CONSERVATIVE  REVOLT  237 

of  a  wide-spreading  revolt  and  separation  from  the  great  Church 
of  the  second  and  third  centuries.  It  has  been  represented 
as  an  attempt  at  innovation  on  the  old  usages  and  habits  of 
primitive  Christianity.  This  is  a  mistaken  view.  At  the  same  time 
if  we  confine  our  attention  to  the  actions  and  claims  of  Montanus 
himself  and  the  circle  of  Phrygia  immediately  surrounding  him, 
there  was  much  that  was  entirely  new.  Montanus'  idea  seems  to 
have  been  that  he  had  been  commissioned  by  God  to  gather  all 
true  Christians  into  a  community,  which  would  be  ready  by  its 
renunciation  of  all  the  claims  that  social  life  presented  and  by  an 
absolute  self- surrender  to  the  requirements  of  the  higher  Chris- 
tian Ufe,  to  meet  the  Lord  Who  was  about  to  come  and  in- 
augurate His  millennial  kingdom  in  the  immediate  future.  He 
seems  to  have  believed  that  the  Church  had  reached  its  final 
term  of  existence  in  the  world.  He  and  his  fellow  prophets 
therefore  represented  the  last  stage  of  prophecy,  and  conse- 
quently possessed  an  inspiration  such  as  none  of  their  pre- 
decessors could  lay  claim  to.  They  in  their  own  persons  and 
with  their  special  prophetic  gifts,  were  the  literal  fulfilment  of  the 
promise  given  by  our  Lord  in  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  that  the 
Father  and  the  Son  would  take  up  their  abode  in  true  believers, 
and  that  the  Paraclete  had  come  to  abide  with  them.^  Hence 
when  they  spoke  under  the  influence  of  the  divine  afllatus  it 
was  not  they,  but  the  Spirit,  that  uttered  the  words.  So  entirely 
were  the  prophets  separated  from  the  Spirit,  who  made  use  of 
their  organs  of  speech,  that  the  oracles  were  uttered  in  the  first 
person,^  and  the  Spirit,  speaking  through  the  mouth  of  a  woman, 
used  the  masculine  forms  of  speech.^    All  this  was  new. 

^  Compare  St.  John's  Gospel,  xiv.  lG-26  ;  xv.  7-15.  It  ought  to  be 
remembered  that  the  most  strenuous  opponents  of  the  Montanists  denied 
the  authenticity  and  authority  of  the  Gosi^d  of  St.  John  and  also  of  the 
Apocalypse. 

2  Compare  the  prophetic  utterances  as  collected  by  Bonwetsch  in  his 
Geschichte  des  Montanismiis,  pp.  197  ff.,  Oracles  1,  3,  4,  5,  12,  18,  21.  It 
ought  to  be  remembered  however  that  this  apphes  only  to  some  of  the 
utterances. 

3  Compare  oracle  11  ;   it  is  from  Epiphanius,  Heresies,  xlviii.  13. 


238      THE  FALL   OF  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  Phrygian  movement  be  connected, 
as  it  must  be,  with  the  strenuous  action  of  Christians  in  Gaul, 
North  Africa,  and  indeed  throughout  mostjiarte  of  the  empire, 
these  novelties  were  toned  down  in  such  a  way  thatjvery  little 
that  was  new  remained.  We  may  mis-read  the  Montanist 
utterances  which  belong  to  its  earliest  period  if  we  interpret 
them  as  TertuUian  and  others  did  ;  '  but  there  is  no  misreading 
the  feelings,  thoughts  and  strivings  of  that  great  mass  of  Chris- 
tians that  welcomed  the  movement  as  something  which  encou- 
raged them  to  resist  that  secularising  of  the  Church  which  was 
being  pressed  forward  by  the  heads  of  so  many  of  the  more 
powerful  Christian  communities. 

When  Dr.  Salmon  -  says  that  the  bulk  of  what  TertuUian 
taught  as  a  Montanist  he  probably  would  equally  have  taught 
if  Montanus  had  never  lived,  the  statement,  thoroughly  correct, 
shows  that  Tertullian  and  the  conservative  Christians  he  repre- 
sented saw  in  the  Montanist  movement  something  which  was  no 
innovation,  but  a  strong  assistance  in  preserving  the  old  con- 
dition of  the  Church  with  its  prophetic  ministry,  its  rules  for 
daily  life,  its  separation  from  the  world,  and  its  expectation 
of  the  nearness  of  the  coming  of  the  Lord  to  found  His  millennial 
kingdom.  The  real  question  between  these  conservative 
Christians  and  the  majority  of  their  brethren  was  not  about  the 
government  of  the  local  churches.  They  all  accepted  the  three- 
fold ministry,  and  both  parties  professed  to  accept  and  to  honour 
prophecy.  But  the  advanced  party,  which  in  the  end  triumphed, 
would  subject  the  prophets  to  the  official  ministry ;  while  the 
conservatives  insisted  that  prophecy  should  be  free  as  in  the 
old  days,  and  specially  free  to  interfere  with  and  rebuke  the 

'  Harnac'k,  whose  view  of  Montanism  is  very  much  his  own,  insists 
strongly  upon  this.  Compare  his  History  of  Dogma,  ii.  95  n.  2  (Engl. 
Trans.).  On  the  other  hand  it  nuist  be  remembered  that  the  Montanist 
sayings  recorded  have  all,  save  those  which  have  come  to  us  from  Ter- 
tullian, been  transmitted  by  their  bitter  enemies  who  may  have  exagger- 
ated. 

^  Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography,  iii.  943b. 


MONTANIST  PROPHECY  239 

growing  desire  for  conformity  with  the  world  and  for  coming 
to  terms  with  the  State/ 

A  conservative  reaction  can  scarcely  avoid  exaggerating  the 
phases  of  Church  life  or  organization  for  which  it  contends 
and  perhaps  suffers.  This  was  probably  true  of  the  reaction 
in  the  second  and  in  the  beginning  of  the  third  centuries ;  but 
the  conception  that  Montanism  in  the  larger  sense  of  the  word 
(i.e.  in  the  sensj  which  includes  Tertullian)  was  an  innovation, 
and  that  the  party  in  the  Church  which  it  attacked  were  carrying 
on  the  old  hne  of  Church  life  and  usages,  is  untenable  and  in 
face  of  all  the  facts  of  history.  The  distinctive  features  of  Mon- 
tanism :  its  appreciation  of  the  prophetic  ministry,  its  conception 
of  the  Gospel  as  the  new  law,  its  refusal  to  entrust  the  ofl&ce- 
bearers  of  the  local  churches  with  the  restoration  of  those  who 
had  lapsed  into  grievous  sins  unless  on  the  recommendation 
of  a  prophet  speaking  in  the  Spirit,  and  its  views  about  the 
near  approach  of  the  millennial  kingdom  of  the  Lord,  were  all 
characteristic  of  the  earlier  Christianity. 

The  question  of  prophecy  may  be  taken  as  an  example. 

It  is  true  that  after  the  separation  between  the  Montanists 
and  the  "  great "  Church,  Christian  theologians  vehemently 
opposed  the  Montanist  theory  of  the  nature  of  prophecy,  and 
especially  protested  against  the  idea  that  true  prophecy  was 
ecstatic.  But  this  was  an  afterthought  for  the  purpose  of  dis- 
crediting the  Montanist  movement  and  claims.  This  can  be 
shown  by  a  comparison  of  the  statements  made  about  the 
prophecy  which  existed  and  was  honoured  within  the  Christian 
Church  before  the  Montanist  movement  arose  and  while  the 
earher  stages  of  the  antagonism  lasted.^     The  nature  of  the 

^  Compare  Ramsay,  The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire,  p.  435. 

2  For  Montanism  compare  : — Ritschl,  Die  Entstehung  der  altkatholischen 
Kirche  (1857),  2nd  eel.  pp.  462-554;  Bonwetsch,  GeschicJdc  des  Montanis- 
mus  (1881);  also  article  in  the  Zeitschrift  fiir  kirchliche  Wissenschaft  und 
kircMichcs  Lchcn  (1884)  on  Die  Frophetie  ivi  apodulischen  und  nachapos- 
tolischcn  Zdtalter  ;  Renan,  Les  Crises  du  Catholicisme  Naissant,  Revue  dcs 
Deux  Mondes  (1881),  Febr.  15  ;  also  in  his  Marc  Aurele  (1882),  pp.  208  fl.  ; 


240      THE  EALL   OF   THE  PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

Christian  prophecy  remains  the  same  down  to  the  time  of  Ire- 
naeus,  whose  descriptions  are  not  different  from  those  of  Justin 
Martyr.  Justin  declares  that  prophetic  gifts  existed  in  the 
Church  in  his  time.  "  For  one  receives  the  spirit  of  under- 
standing, another  of  counsel,  another  of  heahng,  another  of 
strength,  another  of  foreknowledge,  another  of  teaching,  and 
another  of  the  fear  of  God."  '  "  The  prophetic  gifts  remain 
with  us  even  to  the  present  time,"  ^  he  says.  They  abide  in 
fulfilment  of  the  Old  Testament  promise  quoted  by  St.  Peter 
on  the  day  of  Pentecost. ^  Irenaeus  declares  that  prophecy 
existed  in  the  Church  in  his  days.  "  For  some  (behevers)  do 
certainly  cast  out  devils,  so  that  those  who  have  thus  been 
cleansed  from  evil  spirits  do  frequently  both  believe  and  join 
the  Church.  Others  have  knowledge  of  things  to  come ;  they 
see  visions  and  utter  prophetic  expressions."  '*  He  goes  on  to 
saj_that  these  things  come  about  not  by  performing  incantations, 
but  by  praying  to  the  Lord  in  a  pure,  sincere  and  straightforward 
spirit.  Tertullian  has  given  us  a  vivid  picture  of  what  this 
kind  of  prophecy  was  like.  He  says  :  ^  "  We  have  now  among 
us  a  sister  whose  lot  it  has  been  to  be  favoured  with  sundry 
gifts  of  revelation,  which  she  experiences  in  the  Spirit  by  ecstatic 
vision  amidst  the  sacred  rites  on  the  Lord's  Day  in  the  Church. 
She  converses  v/ith  angels  and  even  with  the  Lord.  She  both 
sees  and  hears  mysterious  communications  {sacr amenta).  Some 
men's  hearts  she  miderstands,  and  to  them  who  are  in  need 

Voigt,  Eine  verschollene  Urkunde  des  antimontanistischen  Kampfes  (1891) ; 
articles  on  Montanism  in  the  Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography  by  Salmon, 
in_^the  Encydopcedia  Britannica  by  Harnack,  and  in  Herzog's  Beal-En- 
cydopaedie  by  Moller ;  Harnack's  Das  Monchthum,  seine  Idcale  und  seine 
GeschicMe  (1886),  3rd  ed.  ;  and  his  History  of  Dogma  (1896),  ii.  pp.  94-108 
of  the  Engl.  Trans).  The  monograph  of  Bonwetsch  is  the  most  complete. 
He  has  collected  in  an  appendix  (p.  197)  all  the  recorded  utterances  of 
the  Montanists,  and  an  elaborate  statement  of  all  our  sources  of  informa- 
tion ajjpcars  on  jjp.  16-55. 

^  Justin  Maityr,  Dialogue  with  Tryplw,  39. 

2  Dialogue  with  Trypho,  82.  5  Ibid,  39,  82. 

4  Irenaeus,  Against  Heresies,  II.  xxxii.  4,  5. 

5  Tertullian.  De  Anima.  9. 


MONTANIST   PROPHECY  241 

she  distributes  remedies.  Whether  it  be  in  the  reading  of  the 
Scriptures,  or  in  the  chanting  of  Psalms,  or  in  the  preaching  of 
sermons,  or  in  the  offering  up  of  prayers — in  all  these  religious 
services  matter  and  opportunity  arc  afforded  to  her  of  seeing 
visions.  .  .  .  After  the  people  are  dismissed,  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  sacred  services  she  is  in  the  regular  habit  of  reporting 
to  us  whatever  things  she  may  have  seen  in  vision — for  all  her 
communications  are  examined  with  the  most  scrupulous  care 
that  their  truth  may  be  probed." 

Besides,  the  theory  of  the  nature  of  prophecy  ascribed  to  the 
Montanists  was  the  theory  of  the  second  century.  Prophecy 
was  described  as  ecstatic.  It  is  difficult,  perhaps,  to  under- 
stand exactly  what  was  meant  by  the  word.  This,  however, 
is  clear,  that  it  meant  that  what  came  from  the  prophet  was 
something  given  him,  and  was  not  the  result  of  his  ordinary 
powers  of  intelligence  ;  also  that  the  prophet  could  not  prophesy 
at  will,  but  had  to  wait  for  the  divine  afflatus,  which  might 
come  quite  unexpectedly  or  in  answer  to  prayer.  If  this  be 
all  that  is  meant  by  ecstasy  it  is  plain  that  the  Church  of  the 
second  century  believed  that  its  prophecy  was  ecstatic.  Hermas 
declares  that  in  true  prophecy  the  spirit  "  speaks  only  when  God 
wishes  it  to  speak,"  and  that  the  "  man  filled  with  the  Spirit  of 
God  speaks  to  the  multitude  as  the  Lord  wishes."  '  The  state- 
ments of  Irenaeus  about  true  prophecy  are  exactly  the  same. 
He  says  that  the  gift  of  prophecy  comes  from  the  grace  of  God 
alone,  and  "  that  only  those  on  whom  God  sends  His  grace 
from  above  possess  that  divinely-bestowed  power  of  prophesying." 
Prophets  "  speak  where  and  when  God  pleases."  ■  We  have  seen 
how  the  prophetic  afflatus  came  upon  Ignatius  when  preaching 
to  the  Philadelphians,  and  how  he  cried  out,  speaking  things 
quite  unpremeditated  which  he  felt  had  been  given  him  to 
speak. ^  It  was  afterwards  maintained  that  the  Montanist 
theory  of  prophecy  meant  more  than  this,   and  the  famous 

"  Compare  p.  234  n.  -  Irenaeus,  Against  Heresies,  I.  xiii.  4. 

3  Epistle  to  the  Philiadelphians,  7.     Compare  pp.  189  n.,  192. 
CM.  16 


242      THE  FALL  OF   THE   PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

dictum  of  Montanus  is  continually  quoted  to  mean  more  and  to 
here  pudiated.  Montanus  has  said  :  "  Behold  the  man  is  as  a 
lyre,  and  I  sweep  over  him  as  a  plectrum.  The  man  sleeps, 
and  I  wake.  Behold  it  is  the  Lord  who  estranges  the  souls 
of  men  from  themselves  and  gives  them  souls  "  ;  and  the  meta- 
phor suggests  that  man  is  a  merely  passive  instrument  in  the 
hands  of  God.' 

But  even  if  we  are  to  argue  from  a  metaphor  (always  a  danger- 
ous kind  of  reasoning),  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  same 
or  similar  metaphors  were  used  to  describe  pre-Montanist  pro- 
phecy. Athenagoras  speaks  of  the  Spirit  of  God  moving  "  the 
mouths  of  the  prophets  like  musical  instruments,"  and  of  the 
Spirit  making  use  of  the  prophets  as  "  a  flute-player  breathes 
into  his  flute."  ^  The  author  of  the  Cohortatio  ad  Gentes  uses 
the  famous  metaphor  of  Montanus  and  speaks  of  the  "  divine 
plectrum  descending  from  heaven  and  using  righteous  men  as 
an  instrument  like  a  harp  or  lyre,"  in  order  to  reveal  to  men 
things  divine  and  heavenly.^  It  is  impossible  to  say  that  Mon- 
tanist  prophecy  was  a  new  thing,  and  that  Montanism  in  exalting 
the  prophetic  ministry  was  not  thoroughly  conservative  in  its 
endeavour.'^ 

The  same  result  is  reached  when  we  consider  the  Montanist 
discipline.  The  whole  movement  was  a  protest  against  that 
growing  conformity  with  the  world  which  the  Church  of  the 
second  century  had  felt  constrained  to  attempt,  under  the  leader- 
ship of  the  office-bearers  of  the  local  churches.  Like  all  con- 
servative reactions,  it  exaggerated  the  characteristics  it  had 
arisen  to  conserve,  but  that  was  the  only  great  difference. 

It  is  probable  that  the  movement  in  Phrygia  had  continued 

^  Bonwetsch,  Geschichte  des  Monianismus,  p.  197. 

2  Plea  for  the  Christians,  7,  9. 

3  Pseudo-Justin,  Cohortatio  ad  Oentes,  8. 

4  It  may  be  said  that  this  second  century  theory  of  prophecy  abandoned 
St.  Paul's  great  principle  that  the  spirits  of  the  prophets  are  subject 
to  the  prophets,  and  perhaps  that  is  so.  But  the  point  here  is  that  the 
Church  and  Montanism  had  to  begin  with  the  same  theory  of  prophecy. 


THE  CONSERVATIVE  REVOLT  243 

for  some  years  before  there  was  any  break  with  the  "  great " 
Church  :  and  after  the  separation  did  take  place  efforts  were 
made  to  bring  the  leaders  on  both  sides  together  again.     The 
Martyrs  of  Lyons  wrote  urging  peace,  and  the  Roman  Church 
had  serious  thoughts  of  interfering  on  the  side  of  unity.'     Such 
attempts  would  probably  have  been  unsuccessful.     The  separa- 
tion came  ;  and  in  Phrgyia  at  least,  the  great  proportion  of  the 
Christian  people  sided  with  the  party  of  Montanus.     It  became 
the  Kataphrygian  Churcli   (the   Church-according-to-thc-Phry- 
gians),  and  continued  so  for  long.     When  the  Emperor  Con- 
stantine  recognized  the  Christian  religion  the  Marcionite  and 
Montanist  Christians  did  not  share  in  the  peace  of  the  Church. 
The  persecutions  against  them  were  rather  intensified.    The  Phry- 
gian Montanists,  however,  were  not  overwhelmed ;  but  according 
to    Sozomen  Montanists   disappeared   elsewhere.''    Penal    laws 
of  increasing  severity  were  enacted  against  them  by  Christian 
emperors.     Their  churches  were  confiscated  ;  a  rigorous  search 
was  made  for  their  religious  writings,   which  were  destroyed 
when  discovered ;  the   ordination  of  their  clergy  was  made  a 
penal  offence  ;  the  power  of  disposing  of  their  property  by  will 
was   denied  them,   and  their   nearest   CathoUc   relatives  were 
allowed  to  seize  their  possessions— and  still  they  remained  true 
to  their  church  and  to  the  prophetic  ministry.^     At  last  in  the 
sixth  century  the  Emperor   Justinian  resolved  to  stamp  them 
out,  and  the  historian  Procopius  tells  us  that  in  their  despair 
the    Montanists    gathered   themselves,    with    their    wives    and 

"  Eusebius,  Eccles.  Hist.  V.  iii.  4  ;  TertuUian,  Adversus  Praxean,  1  :  — 
"  For  after  the  bishop  of  Rome  had  acknowledged  the  prophetic  gifts  of 
Montanus,  Prisca  and  Maximilla,  and,  in  consequence  of  the  acknowledg- 
ment, had  bestowed  his  peace  on  the  Cliurches  of  Asia  and  Phrygia  (i.e. 
had  declared  himself  in  communion  with  them),  Praxeas,  by  importun- 
ately urging  false  accusations  against  the  prophets  themselves  and  their 
Churches  and  insisting  on  the  authority  of  the  bishop's  predecessors  in 
the  see,  compelled  him  to  recall  the  pacific  letter  which  he  had  issued,  as 
well  as  fiom  hi^  purpose  of  acknowledging  the  said  gifts." 

2  Ecdes.  Hist.  ii.  32  ;    cf.  vii.  12. 

3  Imperial  edicts  of  398  a,d,  and  415  a.d. 


244      THE   FALL   OF  THE   PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

children,  into  their  churches,  and  setting  fire  to  the  buildings 
perished  in  the  flames  ^  rather  than  submit  to  the  bishops' 
Church  which  had  urged  the  persecution  through  all  these 
centuries,  and  had  forbidden  the  members  to  have  any  com- 
munion with  Montanists,  even  when  confined  in  a  common 
prison  for  a  common  faith.  All  this  bitterness  and  all  this  blood- 
shed because  some  Christians  would  not  believe  that  the  prophetic 
ministry  should  be  kept  in  the  position  assigned  to  it  by  St. 
Paul,  and  should  not  be  subject  to  the  rule  of  the  elders  "  who 
are  in  the  Church — those  who  possess  the  succession  from  the 
apostles."    i^ 

The  "  Great  Church,"  as  it  then  began  to  be  called,  separated 
from  her  daughters,  the  Marcionite  and  the  Montanist  churches, 
went  forth  to  her  task  of  subduing  the  Roman  world  under 
the  guidance  of  a  three- fold  ministry  which  ruled  in  every 
Christian  community  within  the  Empire.  In  its  efforts  to  do 
its  work  thoroughly  the  organization  of  the  great  Empire,  and 
especially  its  religious  organization,  became,  as  we  shall  after- 
wards see,  a  study  growing  in  attractiveness  and  presenting 
points  for  imitation  by  the  leaders  of  the  society. 

In  this  changed  organization  of  the  second  and  third  centuries 
the  old  prophetic  ministry  was  completely  abandoned,  and  the 
local  or  congregational  ministry  had  now  no  superiors  to  interfere 
with  them  and  to  supersede  them  in  exhortation,  in  the  dis- 
pensing of  the  Holy  Supper,  and  in  prescribing  how  Christians 
ought  to  live  in  the  fear  of  God.  The  revolt  against  the  changes 
made  had  ended  in  the  conservatives,  zealous  for  that  ministry 
which  had  come  down  from  apostolic  days,  and  which  St.  Paul 
had  placed  at  the  head  of  the  gifts  bestowed  by  God  upon  His 
people,  being  driven  out^j)f  the  Church,  and  in  their  forming 
separate  societies.  The  ministry  which  remained  is  what 
represented  the  "  helps "  and  "  pilotings "  which  God  had 
placed  in  the  Church.  It  was  the  spontaneous  creation  of  the 
individual  local  churches.  The  ministry  "  from  above  "  had 
^  Procopius,  Historia  Arcana,  11. 


THE  CANONS  OF  HIPPOLYTUS  245 

disappeared  ;  but  wliat  remained  was  not  the  less  divine  be- 
cause it  had  been  the  creation  of  the  congregation,  for  it  was 
baiM^Qn^^^ejiossession  and  the  reco^ition  of  "  gifts  "  of  service 
and  rule  which  God  had  bestowed  according  to  His  promise 
upon   His   worshipping   people. 

Pictures  of  this  ministry  which  ruled  in  the  end  of  the  second 
and  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  third  century,  have  been  preserved 
for  us  in  early  ecclesiastical  manuals.  Perhaps  the  Canons 
ol  Hippokjtus  may  be  most  fitly  selected  to  furnish  them.''  These 
canons  are  thoroughly  representative.  They  were  the  work 
of_aLJffi;estern  ecclesiastic,  and  they  form  the  basis  of  almost  all 
the  later  ecclesiastical  discipline  of  the  Eastern  Church,  They 
are  also  especially  interesting,  because  they  contain  the  clearest 
description  of  Christian  public  worship  which  we  have  between 
the  Epistle  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Corinthians  and  the  much  later 
Apostolic  Constitutions. 

The  Christian  society  consisted  of  behevers  and  their  children, 
with  a  fringe  of  catechumens  or  candidates  for  baptism,  and  those 
who  were  still  only  inquirers  into  the  truths  of  the  Christian 
faith.  The  community  was  sharply  divided  into  clergy  and 
laity,^  with  a  number  of  persons  who  stood  between  the  two 

^  Texte  unci  U titer suchungen,  VI.  iv..  Die  aeltestcn  Quellen  dcs  orien- 
talischen  KirchenrecMs,  erstes  Buck,  Die  canones  Hipjwlyti,  Dr.  Hans 
Achelis  (1891).  Riedel,  Die  Kirchenrechtsqudlen  des  Pair iar chats  Alexan- 
drien  (1900),  pp.  193-230  -.—Die  Canones  Hippolyti.  Compare  Funk,  Die 
Apostolischen  Constitntionen  (1891),  pp.  265-80  ;  Wordsworth,  The  Ministry 
of  Grace  (1901),  pp.  18-42  ;  de  Lagarde  in  Bunsen's  Analecta  Antc-Nicaena, 
ii.  37  ;  Sohm,  Kirchenrecht,  i.  287  n.  20.  x\clielis  gives  in  parallel  columns 
extracts  horn  Ludolf's  Ethiopic  Statutes,  from  the  Coptic  Heptateuch  (a 
nev/  translation  made  by  Steindorf),  and  from  the  eighth  book  of  the 
Apostolic  Constitutions. 

^  The  division  of  the  congregation  into  clergy  and  laity  and  the  common 
mode  of  maldng  the  difference  apparent  in  daily  ecclesiastical  life  were 
both  borrowed  from  the  usages  of  the  civil  society  round  them.  The 
laity  were  called  plebs  and  the  clergy  the  ordo — the  names  applied  to 
the  commons  and  the  senate  of  the  Italian  and  provincial  towns.  As  the 
members  of  the  senate  or  the  ordo  had  a  special  bench,  called  the  con- 
sessus,  in  the  basilica  or  court-house,  so  the  clergy  had  special  seats  in 
church.     "  It  is  the  authority  of  the  Church,"  says  Tertullian,   "  tliat 


246      THE  FALL   OF  THE   PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

sections,  and  who  were  specially  lionouied  for  their  services  or 
character — the  confessors,  the  widows  (honoured  for  their 
abundant  prayer  and  for  their  nursing  the  sick),'  and  celibates 
and  virgins.  The  office-bearers  included  the  pastor  (now  in- 
variably called  the  bishop),  elders,  deacons,  readers,  and,  per- 
haps, subdeacons.  At  the  head  of  all  stood  the  bishop,  in 
whom  the  whole  congregational  life  centred.  He  was  chosen 
by  the  whole  congregation,  who  assembled  in  church  for  the 
purpose.  The  people  were  taught  to  recognize  that  God  was 
with  them  while  they  selected  their  pastor.  When  they  had 
made  their  choice  known  and  had  clearly  intimated  the  man 
whom  they  had  elected,  they  were  enjoined  to  say,  "  Oh  God, 
strengthen  him  whom  Tliou  hast  prepared  for  us."  ^ 

It  was  the  rule,  when  the  bishop  was  set  apart  to  his  office, 
that  the  neighbouring  bishops  should  be  present ;  but  this  was 
not  essential.  The  congregation  possessed  within  itself  the 
power  and  authority  to  carry  out  the  ordination  of  their  chief 
office-bearer.  When  all  things  were  ready,  and  the  whole 
congregation  had  assembled  in  Church,  one  of  the  bishops 
or  one  of  the  elders  of  the  congregation,  was  selected  to  perform 
the  act  of  ordination,  which  consisted  in  laying  his  hands  on 
the  head  of  the  bishop-elect  and  praying  over  him.  ^  The 
beautiful   prayer   of   consecration   is   given. "^    God   was   asked 

makes  the  difference  between  the  ordo  and  the  plebs — this  and  the  honour 
consecrated  by  the  special  bench  of  the  ordo  "  {De  Exhortutione  Castitatis, 

n 

'  "  Viduis  propter  copiosas  orationes,  infirmiorum  curam  et  frequens 
jejunium  praecipuus  honor  tribuatur,"  Can.  ix. 

2  "  Episcopus  ehgatur  ex  onini  populo  .  .  .  dicat  populus  :  nos  ehgimus 
eum.  Deinde  silentio  facto  in  toto  grege  post  exhomologesin  omnes  pro 
eo  orent  dicentes  :  0  Deus,  corrobora  hunc,  quern  nobis  preparasti," 
Can.  ii. 

3  "  Deinde  ehgatur  unus  ex  episcopis  et  presbyteris,  qui  manum  capiti 
ejus  imponat,  et  oret  chcens,"  Can.  ii. 

4  "  O  Deus,  Pater  domini  nostri  Jesus  Cluisti,  Pater  misericordiarum 
et  Deus  totivis  consolationis  .  .  .  .ResiDice  super  N.,  servum  tuum,  tri- 
buens  virtutem  tuam  et  spiritum  efficaccm,  quern  tribuisti  Sanctis  apostohs 
per  dominum  nostrum  Jesum  Christum,  fihum  tuum  unicum  ;    ilhs,  qui 


BISHOP,   ELDERS,   DEACONS  247 

to  fill  theJ)ishop  with  the  Spirit  possessed  by  the  apostles  who 
founded  the  churches  everywhere  ;  to  bless  him  in  permitting 
him  to  rule  a  blameless  flock  ;  to  make  him  a  pattern  in  all 
holy  living  ;  to  make  him  powerful  in  prayer ;  to  give  him 
grace  to  declare  the  pardon  of  sins  ;  and  to  make  him  able 
to  break  the  chains  in  which  the  evil  spirits  held  any  of  his  flock. 
The  prayer  makes  us  see  what  the  duties  of  the  bishop  were. 
He  led  the  pubHc  devotions  of  his  people  ;  he  presided  over 
the  exercise  of  disciphne  ;  he  had  the  care  of  the  poor  and  of 
the  sick  ;  he  was  to  drive  out  the  evil  spirits  who  troubled  the 
bodies  and  the  souls  of  members  of  his  flock.  The  congregation 
was  a  Church  of  Christ  because  they  were  endeavouring  to 
live  the  life  of  new  obedience  to  which  their  Lord  had  called 
them,  and  the  man  at  their  head,  their  representative,  was 
expected  to  be  the  saintliest  man  among  them.  If  he  had  not 
learning,  the  reader  was  there  to  read  and  expound  the  Scrip- 
tures ;  if  he  possessed  few  administrative  gifts  the  elders  and  the 
deacons  were  beside  him  to  aid  him ;  but  a  man  of  prayer  and 
of  holy  life  he  must  be — there  could  be  no  substitute  for  that. 

Nothing  is  said  about  the  election  of  elders,  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  say  whether  they  were  chosen  by  the  people  or 
nominated  by  the  bishop  or  co-opted  by  the  session.  But  we 
have  two  interesting  bits  of  information  which  show  from  what 
classes  of  men  the  elders  were  often  drawn.  JIartyrs  and  con- 
fessors were  to  be  made  elders.     The  martyr  was  one  who,  for 

fundaverunt  ecclesiam  in  omni  loco  ad  honorem  et  gloriam  nominia  tui 
sancti.  Quia  tu  cognovisti  cor  iiniuscuj  usque,  concede  illi,  ut  ipse  sine 
peccato  videat  populum  tuum,  ut  mereatur  pascere  gi'egem  tuum  magnum 
sacrum.  Effice  etiam,  ut  mores  ejus  sint  superiores  omni  populo  sine  ulla 
declinatione.  Effice  etiam,  ut  propter  praestantiam  illi  ab  omnibus  in- 
videatur,  et  accipe  orationes  ejus  et  oblationes  ejus,  quas  tibi  offeret  die 
noctuque,  et  sint  tibi  odor  suavis.  Tribue  etiam  illi,  O  Domine,  episco- 
patum  et  spiritum  clementcm  et  potestatem  ad  remittenda  peccata  ;  et 
tribue  illi  facultatem  ad  dissolvenda  omnia  vincula  iniquitatis  daemonum, 
et  ad  sanandos  omnes  morbos,  et  contere  Satanam  sub  pedibus  ejus 
velociter,  per  dominum  nostrum  Jesus  Christum,  per  quern  tibi  gloria  cum 
ipso  et  Spiritu  Sancto  in  saecula  saeculorum.     Amen."     Can.  iii. 


248      THE    FALL   OF   THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

the  faith's  sake,  had  stood  before  the  civil  tribunal  and  had  been 
punished.  He  became  an  elder  at  once  ;  "  his  confession  was 
his  ordination."  If  a  man  had  made  a  confession  before  the 
court  ^nd  had  not  suffered,  he  was  to  be  made  an  elder  by  the 
bishop,  and  the  same  was  to  be  done  to  a  Christian  slave  who 
had  confessed  and  had  suffered.  Only,  the  bishop  in  these  two 
cases  was  to  omit  the  petition  for  the  bestowal  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.^  The  other  case  is  even  more  interesting.  Those  men 
who  possess  the  "gift  "  of  healing  are  to  be  ordained  presbyters 
after  careful  investigation  be  made  that  the  "  gift "  is  really 
possessed  and  that  the  cm-es  do  really  come  from  God.*  The 
leaders  of  the  churches  seem  to  be  anxious  to  enrol  within  the 
regular  ministry  of  the  congregation,  and  to  prevent  them  over- 
sh^^dowingJts_aaii;^  all  v/ho  are  possessed  of  "  gifts,"  or 
whoni_  Christ  has  honoured  by  permittingjbhem  to  be  witnesses 
for_Him.  The  elder  was  ordained  by  the  bishop,  who  used  the 
same  prayer  of  consecration  which  was  employed  in  the  ordina- 
tion of  bishops,  substituting  only  the  word  presbyteratum  for 
episcopatum,  for  according  to  the  theory  of  the  Canons  the 
elder  was  the  equal  of  the  bishop  in  all  things  save  a  special  seat 

'  "  Quando  quis  dignus  est,  qui  stet  coram  tribunali  et  afficiatur  poena 
propter  Christum,  postea  autem  indulgentia  liber  dimittitur,  talis  postea 
meretur  gradum  presbyteralem  coram  Deo,  non  secundum  ordinationem 
quae  fit  ab  episcopo.  Immo,  confessio  est  ordinatio  ejus.  Quodsi  vero 
episcopus  fit,  ordinetur.  Si  quis  confessione  emissa  tormentis  laesus  non 
est,  dignus  est  presbyteratu  ;  attamen  ordinetur  per  episcopum.  Si  talis, 
cum  servus  alicujus  esset,  propter  Claristum  cruciatus  pertulit,  talis  simi- 
liter est  presbyter  gregi.  Quamquam  cuim  formam  presbyteratus  non 
acceperit,  tamcn  spiritum  presbyteratus  adeptus  est ;  episcopus  igitur 
omittat  orationis  partem,  quae  ad  spiritum  sanctum  pertinet,"  Can.  vi. 

^  "  Si  quis  petitionem  porrigit,  quae  ad  ipsius  ordinationem  pertinet, 
quod  dicit :  Nactus  sum  charisma  sanationis,  non  prius  ordinetur,  quam 
clarescat  ea  res.  Imprimis  inquirendum  est,  num  sanationes,  quae  per 
sum  fiunt,  revera  a  Deo  deriventur,"  Can.  viii.  We  see  in  this  an  echo 
of  the  verse  in  the  Epistle  of  James: — "Is  any  one  among  you  sick  ? 
let  him  call  for  the  elders  of  the  Church  ;  and  lot  them  pray  over  him, 
anointing  him  v.ith  oil  in  tlie  name  of  the  Lord  ;  and  tlie  prayer  of  faith 
shall  save  him  that  is  sick,  and  the  Lord  shall  raise  him  up  ;  and  if  he  have 
committed  sins,  it  shall  be  forgiven  him  "  (v.  14,  15). 


BISHOP,   ELDERS,   DEACONS  249 

in  the  church  and  the  right  to  ordain  elders  and  deacons/  The 
elder  was  thereTofeToTe  fiUed  wlthlhe  spirit' of  the  apostles; 
to  be  an  example  to  the  flock  ;  to  be  powerful  in  prayer ;  to 
care  for  the  sick;  to  attend  to  discipline.  The  elders  assisted 
the  bishop  in  the  conduct  of  public  worship ;  they  placed  their 
hands  on  the  offerings  while  the  bishop  prayed  the  prayer  of 
thanksgiving;  they  stood  on  either  side  of  the  catechumens 
when  they  were  baptized,  and  they  introduced  them  into  the 
congregation.^  The  visitation  of  the  sick,  the  power  to  drive 
out  by  means  of  prayer  the  evil  spirit  which  was  believed  to 
produce  disease,  the  care  of  the  young  and  the  exercise  of  dis- 
cipHne,  were  the  pecuhar  duties  of  the  elders,  as  they  appear 
in  these  Canons. 

The  deacon,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  official  who  does  the 
subordinate  services.  He  is  told  to  remember  that  he  is  the 
servant  of  GJod,  the  servant  of  the  bishop  and  the  servant  of  the 
elders.  The  deacons  visit  the  congregation,  report  cases  of  sick- 
ness to  the  bishop  and  to  the  elders  ;  they  have  special  charge 
over  the  poor,  especially  of  the  "  secret  poor,"  widows,  orphans 
and  strangers.  They  undertake  the  instruction  of  the  cate- 
chumens and  report  to  the  bishop  when  they  are  ripe  for 
baptism.^ 

Not  much  is  said  about  the  duties  of  the  "  widows  "  and  the 
"virgins,"  but  they  seem  to  look  after  the  women  and  the 
girls  as  the  deacons  care  for  the  men.  The^'  widows  "  are  the 
sick-nurses  of  the  commmiity,  and  are  to  be  honoured  for  these 
loving  services  and  for  their  prayers  for  the  whole  congregation. 

'  "  Si  autem  ordiRatiir  presbyter,  omnia  cum  co  similiter  agantur  ac 
cum  episcopo,  nisi  quod  cathedrae  non  insideat.  Etiam  eadem  oratio 
super  CO  orctur  tota  ut  super  episcopo,  cum  sola  exceptione  nominis 
episcopatus.  Episcopus  in  omnibus  rebus  aequiparetur  presbytero  ex- 
cepto  nomine  cathedrae  et  ordinatione,  quia  potestas  ordinandi  ipsi  non 
tribuitur,"  Can.  iv.  It  should  be  noted  however  that  a  martyr  or  one 
who  has  confessed  the  Lord  and  suffered  for  his  confession  and  who  ipso 
jncto  becomes  an  elder  does  not  become  a  bishop  unless  by  regular  or- 
dination ;   and  the  equality  in  theory  is  not  one  of  fact. 

2  Canon  xix.  3  Canons  v.,  xvii. 


250      THE   FALL   OF   THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

The  picture  of  the  Christian  community  presented  in  these 
Canons  is  that  of  a  single  congregation  ruled  by  a  pastor  or 
bishop  with  his  session  of  elders,  who,  theoretically  of  the  same 
ecclesiastical  rank  as  himself,  are  in  practice  his  assistants. 
The  laity  are  in  the  position  of  loving  subordination  which 
Ignatius  contemplated  and  urged.  The  brotherhood  of  the 
members  of  the  community  is  expressively  shown  in  the  way 
in  which  newly  baptized  catechumens,  introduced  formally 
by  the  elder,  are  greeted  with  the  kiss  of  welcome  and  received 
with  expressions  of  joy  ;  '  in  the  care  for  the  sick  and  the  poor  ; 
in  the  provisions  for  nursing  suffering  women  by  the  "  widows  " 
and  the  "  virgins  "  ;  and  in  the  thought  that  it  is  the  duty  of 
the  widows  to  pray  for  the  whole  congregation. 

The  little  society  is  thoroughly  self-governing  and  independ- 
ent. It  contains  within  itself  the  power  to  perform  all  ecclesi- 
astical acts  from  the  selection  and  ordination  of  its  bishop  ^ 
to  the  expulsion  of  offenders  ;  ^  but  it  nevertheless  belongs  to 
a  wide  society  or  larger  brotherhood,  and  this  is  expressed  in 
the  usual  but  not  essential  practice  of  associating  neighbouring 
bishops  with  its  elders  in  the  ordination  of  its  bishop. "* 

The  acts  of  worship  are  described  with  greater  detail  in  these 
Canons  than  in  any  earlier  Christian  document  save  the  First 
Epistle  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Corinthians.  St.  Paul  has  given  us 
more  information  about  the  meeting  for  Exhortation  ;  these 
Canons  tell  us  more  about  the  meeting  for  Thanksgiving — indeed, 
they  present  us  with  the  earliest  complete  description  of  this 
crowning  act  of  Christian  worship.  As  in  apostolic  times, 
we  find  two  separate  meetings  for  public  worship — the  meeting 
for  Exhortation  and  the  meeting  for  Thanksgiving-^ut  the 
latter  is  no  longer  associated  with  a  common  meal.  No  forms 
of  prayer  are  given  for  use  at  the  former,  but  there  is  a  set  form 
of  service  prescribed  for  the  latter.     Both  are  held  on  the  Lord^s 

'  "  Jam  cum  toto  populo  orant,  qui  eos  osculentur  gaudentes  cum  iis 
cum  jubilatione,"  Can.  xix. 
^  Canon  ii.  3  Canons  i.  xi.-xvi.  4  Canon  ii. 


THE  MEETING   FOR   EXHORTATION  251 

Day — tlie  meeting  for  Exhortation  early  in  the  morning,  and  the 
Eucharistic  service  in  the  afternoon.^ 

The  exercises  at  the  meeting  for  Exhortation  were  prayers, 
singing  of  psalms  and  hymns,  reading  portions  of  Scripture  and 
exhortation  in  sermon  and  address.^  No  details  are  given  us 
about  the  order  of  the  service  save  that  there  was  a  prayer  be- 
tween the  reading  of  each  portion  of  the  service.  The  early 
freedom  of  worship  no  longer  existed.  The  reading,  prayers, 
and  exhortation  were  all  in  the  hands  of  the  clergy.  The  people 
shared  in  the  singing  only.  It  vras  expected  that  they  should 
join  heartily  in  this  part  of  the  service,  for  one  of  the  questions 
put  to  candidates  for  baptism  was  whether  they  had  sung 
heartily  in  the  service  of  praise.^  This  service  was  held  not  only 
on  the  Lord's  Day,  but  on  every  day  of  the  week.  It  was  the 
daily  worship  of  the  great  Christian  family.  The  Canons  order 
that  the  elders,  deacons,  readers  and  people  are  to  come  to 
church  at  cock-crow  {quo  tempore  canit  gallus),  and  to  consecrate 
the  day  by  a  service  of  prayer,  praise,  and  reading  the  Word; 
All  the  clergy,  save  the  bishop,  are  strictly  ordered  to  be  presentk- 
Only^ickness^_absence  on  a  journey  are  to  be  taken  as  excuses. 
The  catechumens,"*  whose  instructions  in  the  faith  by  the  deacons 
seems  to  have  been  given  just  before  the  service  began,  were 

^  It  must  have  been  in  the  afternoon  :  for  although  the  rule  was  that 
the  whole  service  must  end  before  sundown,  there  was  often  an  Agape  or 
Supjyer  afterwards  and  it  had  to  be  finished  before  darkness  had  come. 
Can.  xxxii. 

^  "  Congregentur  quotidie  in  ecclesia  presbyteri  et  diaconi  et  anagnostai 
omnisque  populus  tempore  galhcinii,  vacentque  orationi,  psalmis,  et 
lectioni  scripturarum  cum  orationibus.  .  .  .  De  Clero  autem  qui  convenire 
negligunt,  neque  morbo  neque  itinere  impediti,  separentur,"  Can.  xxi. 
"  Porro  autem  tempore,  quo  canit  gallus,  instituendae  sunt  orationes  in 
ecclesiis,"  Can.  xxvii. 

3  Catechumenus  baptismo  initiandus  si  ab  iis,  qui  eum  adducunt,  bono 
testimonio  commendatur,  eum  illo  tempore,  quo  instruebatur,  infirmos 
visitasse  et  debiles  sustentasse  seque  ab  omni  perverso  sermone  custodisse, 
laudes  cednisse,  numque  oderit  vanam  gloriam,  num  contempserit  super- 
biam,  sibique  elegerit  humihtatem,"  Can.  xix. 

4  "  Quando  vero  doctor  quotidianum  pensum  docendi  terminavit,  orent 
separati  a  christianis,"  Can.  xvii 


252      THE  FALL   OF  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

required  to  be  present,  and  had  a  special  place  assigned  to  them. 
If  any  members  of  the  congregation  were  unable  to  be  present 
at  this  morning  worship  they  are  enjoined  to  read  the  Scriptures 
at  home,  so  that  the  first  thing  that  the  sun  sees  when  it  shines 
into  their  windows  in  the  morning  may  be  the  long  roll  of  Scrip- 
ture unfolded  on  their  knees.  ^ 

The  Eucharistic  service  is  described  at  much  greater  length, 
and  the  details  have  to  be  collected  from  instructions  scattered 
throughout  the  Canons.^  It  had  three  parts— an  introductory 
service,  the  actual  Holy  Supper,  and  the  receiving  and  dis- 
tributing the  thankofferings.  Most  of  the  details  are  clearly 
enough  stated,  but  it  is  impossible  to  say  with  any  certainty 
whether  a  sermon  was  part  of  the  introductory  service.  It  was 
so  in  the  time  of  Justin  Martyr,^  and  his  account  is  so  like  an 
outline  whose  details  can  be  filled  in  by  what  is  directed  in  these 
Canons,  that  it  is  improbable  that  this  very  important  portion 
of  the  service  had  fallen  into  disuse.  It  may  be,  however, 
that  the  sermon,  which  must  have  been  given  at  the  morning 
service  on  the  Lord's  Day,"^  was  considered  to  suffice,  and  that 

^  "  Quocunque  die  in  ecclesia  non  orant,  sumas  scripturam,  ut  legas  in 
ea.  Sol  conspiciat  matutino  tempore  scripturam  super  genua  tua," 
Can.  xxvii.  1. 

2  The  canons  have  been  carefully  analyzed  and  the  information  they 
convey  on  the  services  and  organization  brought  together  by  Dr.  Achelis 
in  his  admirable  edition.  I  have  made  full  use  of  his  labour.  In  one 
rather  important  point,  however,  I  fail  to  follow  his  arguments.  He  be- 
lieves that  the  bishop  alone  was  entitled  to  conduct  the  eucharistic  service 
when  it  took  place  on  a  Sunday,  and  that  the  provisions  for  an  elder  or  a 
deacon  presiding  refers  only  to  week-day  celebrations.  The  statements 
made  in  the  Canons  are  not  distinct  and  our  conclusions  are  only  inferences. 
The  reasons  for  the  delegation  seem  to  me  to  be  the  necessary  absence 
of  the  bishop  and  the  necessary  absence  of  the  elders  ;  and  apply  equally 
well  to  the  Sunday  as  to  other  celebrations.  It  was  natural  that  provision 
should  be  made  where  Christian  congregations  were  scattered  and  far 
from  each  other. 

3  Justin's  order  of  service  is : — Prolonged  reading  of  the  scriptures, 
permon  by  tlie  pastor  or  bishop,  prayer,  the  Bread  and  Wine  brought  in. 
Apology,  i.  67. 

^  Compare  Canon  xii. 


THE  EUCHARISTIC   SERVICE  253 

the  service  described  by  Justin  had  been  divided  into  two  parts. 
The  Eucharistic  service,  held  in  the  evening  or  in  the  late 
afternoon/  began  by  the  readers,  placed  at  an  elevated  desk, 
reading  portions  of  Scripture  one  after  another,  the  readers 
taking  turns  and  relieving  each  other.  This  went  on  for  some 
time  while  the  congregation  were  gradually  assembling."  If 
there  was  a  sermon  by  the  bishop  it  would  be  delivered  after 
the  reading  was  over  and  all  had  taken  their  places.  A  prayer 
including  confession  of  sins  followed.  The_  bishop  stood  behind 
a  table,  called  the  "  Table  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  the  Lord," 
the  elders  on  his  right  hand  and  on  his  left.  The  elements, 
bread  and  wine,  which  had  been  furnished  by  intending  com- 
municants, were  then  brought  in  by  the  deacons,^  and  were 
placed  on  the  Table  before  the  bishop.  The  elders,  deacons 
and  readers  were  all  dressed  in  white — the  colour  of  festival 
times.'*  Then  the  bishop  and  the  elders  placed  their  hands 
on  the  bread  and  on  the  cup,  and  the  bishop  began  the  re- 
sponsive prayers  : — 

The  bishop  .      .      .     The  Lord  he  mth  you  all. 
The  congregation    .         And  with  Thy  spirit. 

The  bishop  .     .      .     Lift  up  your  hearts. 
The  congregation    .  We  have,  to  the  Lord. 

The  bishop  .      .      .     Let  us  give  thanks  to  the  Lord. 
The  congregation    .  Worthy  and  righteous.^ 

The  bishop  then  prayed  over  the  elements  (no  form  of  prayer 
being  given). ^    The  bishop, _himself  distributed.    He  stood  by 

^  The  whole  service  had  to  be  over  before  sundown  ;  and  there  was 
frequently  a  common  meal  late  in  the  evening. 

*  "  Etiam  anagnostai  habebant  /estiva  imlumenta,  et  stent  in  loco  lectionis 
et  alter  alteram  excipiat,  donee  totus  populus  congregetur,"  Can. 
xxxvii. 

3  Canons  iii.  xix. 

■♦  "  Quotiescunque  episcopus  mysteriis  frui  vult,  congregentur  diaconi 
et  presbyteri  apud  eum,  induti  vestiment  is  albis  pulchioribus  toto  populo 
potissimum  autem  splendidis.  Bona  autem  opera  omnibus  vestimentis 
praestant,"  Can.  xxxvii. 

5  Canon  iii. 

^  It  is  probable  that  this  prayer  was  extempore  ;  no  form  is  prescribed 


254      THE   FALL   OF  THE   PROPHETIC  MINISTRY 

the  "  Table  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  the  Lord."  The  people 
came  one  by  one  to  the  bishop,  who  first  gave  the  Bread,  saying, 
"  This  is  the  Body  of  the  Lord,"  and  then  the  Cup,  saying, 
"  This  is  the  Blood  of  the  Lord,"  and  the  people  answered 
"  Amen."  '  At  the  celebration  at  which  the  newly  baptized 
communicants  partook,  the  elders  who  stood  beside  the  bishop 
had  cups  of  milk  and  honey  in  their  hands,  and  the  communi- 
cants partook  of  these  also  from  the  hands  of  the  elders  to  show 
that  they  had  become  as  little  children  and  fed  on  the  food  of 
infants ;  ^  but  whether  this  ceremony  accompanied  every 
celebration  of  the  Holy  Supper  is  uncertain.  The  deacons 
who  brought  in  the  elements  were  required  to  sing  a  psalm  as 
they  entered,  and  the  sound  of  the  singing  is  compared  to  the 
tinkle  of  the  bells  on  the  robes  of  Aaron. ^ 

After  the  celebration  the  faithful,  who  all  remained  in  the 
church,  came  forward  to  the  "Table"  and  presented  their 
offerings,  the  firstfruits.  These  consisted  of  all  kinds  of  useful 
things — oil,  wine,  milk,  honey,  eatables  of  all  kinds,  the  fruit  of 
trees  and  the  fruit  of  the  ground  (apples  and  cucumbers  being 
specially  mentioned),  wool,  cloth  and  money.  They  were  all 
placed  at  or  on  the  table. '^    The  bishop  prayed  the  prayer  of 

in  the  Canons,  and  many  forms  for  other  parts  of  the  service  are  given  in 
the  text ;  the  prayer  of  consecration  was  extempore  in  the  time  of  Justin 
Martyr  {Apology,  i.  67  : — "  The  president  offers  prayers  and  thanksgivings 
according  to  his  abihty  "). 

^  "  Communicat  popuhim  stans  ad  mensam  coi'poris  et  sanguinis  Domini 
.  .  .  Deinde  porrigat  ilUs  episcopus  de  corpore  Christi  dicens :  Hoc  est 
corpus  Christi ;  illi  vero  dicant :  Amen  ;  et  ei,  quibus  ille  caUcem  porrigit 
dicens  :  Hie  est  sanguis  Christi,  dicant :    Amen,"  Can.  xix. 

^  Canon  xix.  :— "  Et  presbyteri  portant  ahos  caUces  lactis  et  meUis  ut 
doceant  eos,  qui  communicant,  iterum  eos  natos  esse  ut  parvuh,  quia 
parvuU  communicant  lac  et  mel." 

3  Canon  xxix.  : — "  Et  sint  ilhs  psahni  pro  tintinabulis,  quae  erant  in 
tunica  Aaronis." 

4  This  offertory  or  collection  in  hind,  which  the  records  of  the  early 
centuries  bring  vividly  before  us,  can  be  seen  in  village  churches  in  India 
at  present.  The  offerings  there  include  many  things  not  mentioned  in 
the  text.  Great  baskets  are  deposited  in  which  the  people  place  small 
parcels  of  all  kind  of  grain,  the  produce  of  their  fields,  fruits,  cooked  food, 


DISTRIBUTION  OF  THE   OFFERINGS  255 

thanksgiving  over  the  gifts  and  the  givers — a  special  thanks- 
giving being  said  over  the  oil,  probably  because  it  was  so  much 
used  in  ecclesiastical  services.  The  bishop  then  pronounced 
the  Benediction,  and  the  people  responded  with  the  Doxology : 
Glory  to  Thee,  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  for  ever  and  ever.' 

This  did  not  end  tlie  service,  however.  The  offerings  had  to 
be  distributed  before  the  going  down  of  the  sun.  The  poor,  the 
widows  and  the  orphans  rose  from  their  places,  and  came  to 
the  bishop,  who  distributed  to  them  the  offerings  which  had  been 
received,  and  also  the  bread  and  wine  which  had  remained  after 
the  Communion.^  Portions  were  no  doubt  reserved  for  those 
in  prison,  for  strangers  who  might  arrive  during  the  week,  and 
for  the  sick  who  were  unable  to  come  to  church.^  The  Canons 
forbid  any  of  these  offerings  being  reserved  for  the  clergy,  as 
was  the  custom  in  later  times,  and  those  of  them  who  required 
assistance  were  reckoned  among  the  poor.'* 

It  was  the  custom  for  one  of  the  wealthier  members  of  the 
congregation  to  give  a  supper  on  the  evening  of  Sunday  to  the 
poor  of  the  congregation.  Members  who  had  come  from  a  dis- 
tance, as  Justin  Martyr  tells  us  they  did,  were  doubtless  included.^ 

eggs,  flasks  of  oil  and  live  poultry.  I  once  saw  a  portion  of  the  offertory 
running  away  with  the  beadle  !  It  was  a  lively  young  sheep,  and  when 
the  beadle  tried  to  hold  it,  it  pulled  him  round  the  corner  of  the  church. 
Missionaries  from  Ceylon  have  assured  me  that  the  Christian  matrons  are 
accustomed  to  put  aside  every  tenth  handful  of  the  rice  or  other  things 
to  be  cooked  and  thus  collect  during  the  week  what  is  given  on  Sunday. 
They  say  that  when  the  people  were  heathen  they  did  the  same  in  order 
to  present  offerings  to  their  priests  ;  and  they  carry  the  practice  over  into 
Cliristianity.  It  was  probably  the  same  in  heathen  antiquity,  and  this  is 
no  doubt  the  reason  why  in  the  Canons  the  bishop  is  called  "  priest "  in 
connexion  with  receiving  these  offerings  and  not  in  connexion  with  liis  pre- 
siding at  the  Holy  Supper  (Canon  xxxvi.).  The  title  "  priest "  {sacerdos) 
is  given  to  the  bishop  alone  and  that  only  when  he  performs  the  two 
functions  of  exorcising  the  sick  (Canon  xxiv.),  and  of  receiving  and  blessing 
the  offerings  (Canon  xxxvi.)  ;  both  actions  done  by  the  heathen  priests 
with  which  the  early  converts  from  paganism  were  quite  famiUar. 
^  Canon  iii.  2  Canon  xxxii. 

3  Canon  v.,  cf.  also  Justin,  Apology,  i.  65,  67. 

4  Compare  above,  p.  201.  5  Apology,  i.  67. 


256      THE   FALL   OF  THE   PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

The  bishop  presided,  and  the  clergy  (one  deacon  at  least)  were 
present.  The  bishop  prayed  for  the  host  and  for  the  guests, 
and  the  prayer  of  thanksgiving  which  was  said  during  the  Com- 
munion service  was  repeated.  When  it  became  dark  the  deacon 
had  the  charge  of  lighting  the  lamps,  but  the  supper  came  to 
an  end  before  it  got  very  dark.  The  president  generally  gave 
the  guests  a  short  address^  v.^hich  he  delivered  sitting,  and  which 
was  "  for  their  benefit  and  for  his  own."  The  people  were  told 
to  eat  their  fill,  but  not  to  drink  to  excess ;  not  to  speak  too 
much  ;  not  to  shout ;  and  above  all  not  to  bring  disgrace  on 
their  host  by  indulging  in  mischievous  gossip.^ 

It  is  pleasant  to  learn  that  occasional  suppers  were  given  to 
the  widows  of  the  congregation.  The  poor  bodies,  who  are 
elsewhere  praised  for  their  fasting,^  seemed  to  have  enjoyed  a 
good  supper,  where  they  could  eat  and  drink  ad  satietatem  neque 
vero  ad  ebrietatem,  and  to  have  been  inclined  to  prolong  the  feast 
as  much  as  possible,  for  they  need  to  be  warned  thrice  over 
within  three  short  sentences  that  they  are  to  end  their  supper 
by  the  going  down  of  the  sun.^  These  suppers  are  called  yl^apae 
by  Dr.  Achelis.  Dr.  Riedel,  on  the  other  hand,  refuses  to  trans- 
late the  word  in  this  way.'^  This  is  to  be  said,  however,  in 
justification  of  Dr.  Achelis'  translation  that  the  entertainments 

^  Canons  xxxii.-xxxv^.       2  Canons  xxxii.  ix. 

3  "  Si  quis  viduis  coenam  parare  vult,  curet,  ut  habeant  coenam  et 
ut  dimittantur,  antequam  sol  occidat.  Si  vero  sunt  multae,  caveatur,  ne 
fiat  confusio  neve  impediantur,  quominus  ante  vesperam  dimittantur. 
Unicuique  autem  earum  sufFiciens  cibus  potusque.  Scd  abcant  antequam 
nox  advesperascat,'"  Can.  xxxv. 

4  Compare  Riedel,  Die  Kirchcnrcchtsqucllcn  des  Patriarchats  Alenandrien 
(1900),  p.  221  n.  He  thinks  that  they  correspond  with  feasts  which  are 
still  the  custom  among  the  Cliristians  of  the  Levant,  and  quotes  Wans- 
leben  : — "  lis  ont  encore  la  coutume  de  faire  des  Agapes  ou  des  repas  de 
charite  apres  les  Batemes,  et  les  enterrcmens,  pour  tous  ceux  qui  veulent 
s'y  trouver  ;  donnant  a  un  chacun  un  plat  de  bouilhe,  avec  un  morceau 
de  viande  dedans,  et  du  pain  autant  qu'il  en  peut  manger  ;  et  ces  repas 
se  font  ou  dans  I'eglise  meme  ou  sar  le  toit  de  I'egUse,  qui  est,  selon  !a 
coutume  des  Levantins,  toujours  plat,  et  capable  de  contenir  un  grand 
nombre  d'hommes." 


DISTRIBUTION   OF   THE   OFFERINGS  257 

have  all  a  religious  significance,  that  there  seems  to  have  been 
a  symboHcal  breaking  of  bread  at  all  of  them,  that  one  of  them, 
which  was  a  memorial  feast  in  honour  of  a  martyr,  was  preceded 
by  the  celebration  of  the  Holy  Supper,  and  that  at  all  of  them 
the  prayer  of  thanksgiving  which  was  included  in  the  Eucharistic 
service  was  recited.'  The  Lord's  Day  supper,  at  any  rate,  has 
all  the  appearance  of  the  older  Agape,  separated  from  the  Holy 
Supper,  and  coming  after  it  instead  of  preceding  it. 

It  is  very  interesting  to  observe  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
Canons  which  implies  that  the  Holy  Supper  has  any  special 
and  unique  sacrificial  conceptions  attached  to  it.  Such  ideas 
are  markedly  absent.  The  word  altar  occurs  in  the  Canons ; 
but  in  those  portions  which  refer  to  the  act  of  celebrating  the 
Lord's  Supper,  the  phrase  used  is  "  Table  of  the  Body  and  Blood 
of  the  Lord."-  The  term  offering  is  certainly  used  of  the  Bread 
and  the  Wine  in  the  Holy  Supper,  but  it  is  equally  employed  to 
denote  the  firstfruits  given  to  the  bishop  by  the  people.^  The 
term  friest  is  never  found  in  connexion  with  ordination  or 
with  the  celebration  of  the  Holy  Supper.  It  occurs  in  two 
references  only,  and  is  used  of  the  bishop  when  he  is  described 
as  receiving  the  firstfruits  and  as  exorcising  the  sick  ;  and 
since  both  of  these  acts  were  performed  by  the  pagan  priest- 
hood it  is  easy  to  conjecture  why  the  word  is  applied  to  the 
bishop  in  these  acts.'' 

Reverence  in  all  the  actions  of  public  worship  is  carefully 
inculcated.  The  Church  is  the  house  of  God  and  the  place  of 
prayer  with  fear  ;  women  are  not  to  come  there  in  gaudy  apparel, 

'  These  memorial  feasts  were  called  Anamneseis  ;  the  custom  of  cele- 
brating the  birthday  of  an  honoured  martyr  with  a  memorial  feast  was  one 
of  the  usages  of  primitive  Christianity  which  gave  the  early  Christian 
societies  a  superficial  resemblance  to  the  pagan  collegia  ;  compare  above 
p.  126. 

2  Altar  occurs  in  the  Canon  which  tells  the  clergy  to  keep  the  vessels 
clean,  etc.  (Canon  xxix.)  ;  mensa  is  used  when  the  act  of  communicating 
is  described  (Canon  xix.). 

3  Canons  xvit.  xxxii.  xix.  ■*  Canons  xxxvi.  xxiv. 

CM.  17 


258      THE   FALL   OF  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

and  they  are  not  to  laugh  nor  chatter  there.  A  worthy  matron 
was  made  an  "  inspectress,"  to  see  that  the  women  and  girls 
behaved  themselves  properly.'  The  clergy  are  to  see  that  the 
commmiion  elements  are  kept  with  care  from  all  impurity, 
and  specially  that  flies  do  not  get  into  the  wine  of  the  sacra- 
ment. Great  care  is  also  to  be  taken  that  no  drop  of  the  wine 
nor  crumb  of  bread  falls  to  the  ground  while  the  elements  are 
partaken  of  by  the  communicants.  In  short,  the  Canons  contain 
many  a  little  suggestion,  familiar  to  all  missionaries,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  teaching  that  reverence  in  worship  which  is  almost  always 
lacking  in  heathen  religious  rites. 

These  early  Christians  were  men  of  their  generation,  however. 
They  believed  that  the  air  around  them  was  full  of  evil  spirits 
bent  on  their  discomfiture,  whose  malignity  had  to  be  guarded 
against ;  ^  but  while  the  traces  of  such  superstitions  appear, 
one  cannot  fail  to  see  how  the  attempt  is  continually  made  to 
wean  the  Christians  from  pagan  superstitions  which  they  have 
brought  over  with  them  into  Christianity.  To  take  only  one 
example,  sick  persons  are  prohibited  from  continuing  beyond  the 
hours  of  prayer  in  the  Church  or  from  sleeping  there.-'  When 
it  is  remembered  that  sick  folk  were  taken  to  the  heathen  tem- 
ples in  order  that  the  dwelling  in  a  sacred  place  might  cure  them, 
it  is  easy  to  see  what  the  meaning  of  the  prohibition  is.  One 
can  perceive  the  doors  by  which  pagan  ideas  might  enter  into 
Christian  worship,  but  the  sorry  mixture  of  paganism  and 
Christianity  which  was  to  follow  Cyprian's  conceptions  of  priest- 
hood and  sacrifice  were  still  in  the  future. 

^  "  Mulier  libera  ne  vcniat  veste  vo.riegata  .  .  .  neve  crincs  demit  tat 
solutos,  habeat  potius  capillos  complexes  in  domo  Dei,  neve  faciat  cirros 
frontales  in  capite  quando  vult  participare  in  mysteriis  sacris  (Canon  xvii.). 
It  is  one  of  the  marks  of  a  good  woman  that  if  she  excels  male  beings  in 
knowledge  she  does  not  let  any  one  see  that  she  does  ! 

-  The  fear  of  demons  appears  most  strongly  in  the  exorcisms  at  baptism, 
in  exorcising  the  bread  at  the  feasts,  and  in  the  reason  given  why  no  drop 
of  wine  or  crumb  of  bread  was  to  be  allowed  to  fall  to  the  ground :    Ihe 
demons  might  get  hold  of  it.     Compare  Canons  xix.  xxix.  xxxiv 
3  Canon  xxiv. 


COMPARISON   WITH   MODERN   ORGANISATION    259 

Such  were  the  ordinary  services,  and  such  the  organization 
of  a  Christian  Church  in  the  earlier  decades  of  the  third  century, 
before  accommodation  to  imperial  points  of  view  and  imitation 
of  pagan  organization  had  invaded  the  Church  of  Christ. 

Perhaps  a  brief  comparison  of  this  organization  of  the  ministry 
with  modern  types  may  bring  it  more  distinctly  before  us.  It 
had  some  relation  with  all  modern  types  of  ecclesiastical  organi- 
zation, and  was  identical  with  none. 

The  organization  had  a  certain  resemblance  to  modern  Con- 
gregationalism, for  the  vast  majority  of  communities  called 
churches  were  simply  self-governing  and  independent  congre- 
gations. The  bishop  was  the  pastor  of  the  congregation,  and 
in  him,  as  in  a  modern  congregationaHst  Church,  all  the  ecclesi- 
astical life  centred.  On  the  other  hand,  this  does  not  apply 
to  all  these  primitive  churches  ;  for  the  independent  unity  was 
the  community  large  or  small,  and  before  the  close  of  the  second 
century  the  larger  communities  must  have  included  several 
congregations,  and  all  were  served  on  the  collegiate  principle 
by  the  one  bishop  and  his  body  of  elders  and  deacons — the  one 
pastor  or  bishop  representing  the  unity  of  the  community.  These 
primitive  independent  churches  all  cherished  the  essential  idea 
that  they  belonged  to,  and  were  portions  of,  a  common  visible 
Church— the  Great  Church  it  was  called,  to  distinguish  it  from 
the  Marcionite  and  Montanist  Churches  ;  but  they  had  not  yet 
discovered  the  way  to  express  this  idea  of  a  visible  catholicity 
in  a  definite  political  organization.  We  have  the  beginnings 
of  the  pohty  in  the  common  though  not  universal  custom  that 
all  the  neighbouring  bishops  assisted  at  the  ordination  of  a 
bishop. 

The  organization  had  a  much  greater  resemblance  to  what  is 
commonly  called  the  Presbyterian,  and  ought  properly  to  be 
called  the  Conciliar,  system  of  Church  government.  The  points 
of  agreement  are  very  many.  There  is  common  to  both  the 
conception  of  the  three-fold  ministry  of  pastor  or  bishop,  elder 
or  presbyter,  and  deacon,  and  both  have  the  theoretical  equiva- 


260      THE  FALL   OY  THE  PROPHETIC   MINISTRY 

lence  of  the  offices  of  bishop  and  elder  (save  only  a  special  seat 
in  the  Church  and  the  right  to  ordain  elders  and  deacons),  while 
in  practice  the  bishop  or  pastor  is  the  real  head  of  the  whole 
of  the  ecclesiastical  life.  In  both  there  is  the  idea  that  the  unit 
of  organization  is  the  Christian  community  of  the  place,  and  the 
conception  that  the  unity  can  be  preserved  by  a  collegiate 
administration.^  Both  have  the  thought  that  the  whole  congre- 
gational activity  centres  in  the  bishop  or  pastor,  who  is  the 
leader  in  public  worship  and  who  celebrates  the  sacraments. 
Both  believe  strongly  that  each  congregation  is  a  portion  of 
the  visible  Catholic  Church,  that  catholicity  can  best  be  re- 
duced to  a  polity  by  means  of  representative  councils  with 
gradually  widening  areas  of  control,  and  that  the  ordination  of  a 
bishop  or  pastor  is  to  be  performed  by  the  pastors  or  bishops 
of  the  bounds  as  representatives  of  the  Church  Catholic.^  The 
two  great  differences  are  :  that  the  modern  system  of  organi- 
zation insists  that  the  bishop  or  pastor  cannot,  of  his  own  autho- 
rity, delegate  to  a  presbyter  or  to  a  deacon  the  right  to  celebrate 

^  This  characteristic  has  almost  faded  out  of  most  EngUsh-speaking 
portions  of  the  great  Presbyterian  Church,  but  it  remains  in  the  Dutch- 
speaking  parts.  The  traces  remaining  in  Scotland  are  the  almost  for- 
gotten, but  still  existing,  "  General  Kirk-Sessions  "  of  the  larger  towns. 

2  Dr.  Sanday  has  said  {Exjiositor,  Jan.-June,  1887,  p,  113)  that  in  the 
earlier  centuries  "  every  town  of  any  size  had  its  bishop  ;  and  if  there 
were  several  churches,  they  were  served  by  the  elergy  whom  the  bishop 
kept  about  him :  they  were  in  fact  Uke  our  (Church  of  England)  present 
'  chapels  of  ease,'  and  the  whole  position  of  the  bishop  was  very  similar 
to  that  of  the  incumbent  of  the  parish  church  in  one  of  our  smaller  towns. 
The  tendency  at  first,  as  Ignatius  shows,  was  towards  complete  centrali- 
zation :  the  whole  serving  of  the  paroikia  was  directly  in  the  hands  of 
the  bishop.  The  parish  system  in  the  later  sense,  Avith  an  extended 
diocese,  and  a  number  of  more  or  less  independent  clergy  circling  round 
the  bishop,  did  not  grow  up  until  the  6th-9tli  centuries,  when  it  took 
shape  mainly  in  France  under  the  Merovingian  and  Carolingian  kings. 
In  some  respects  the  Nonconformist  communities  of  our  own  time  furnish 
a  closer  parallel  to  the  primitive  state  of  things  than  an  EstablishedjChurch 
can  possibly  do."  This  is  all  true  so  far  as  it  goes  ;  but  it  takes  no  account 
of  the  three-fold  ministry,  which  is  not  exhibited  in  an  English  parish. 
The  primitive  three-fold  ministry  apjiears  however  as  soon  as  the  Border 
is  crossed  into  Scotland  or  over  into  Holland. 


COMPARISON   WITH   MODERN   ORGANISATION    261 

the  sacraments,  and  that  the  bishop  or  pastor  of  the  early 
centuries  had  ahnost  unlimited  control  over  the  ecclesiastical 
finances  and  property  of  the  congregation.  This  characteristic 
of  primitive  Christian  organization  arose  from  the  fact  that  at 
first  the  sole  property  was  the  firstfruits  given  to  the  bishop 
at  the  close  of  the  Holy  Supper  and  distributed  afterwards  by 
him,  and  it  was  strengthened  when  the  churches  were  able  to 
hold  buildings  and  burial  places  by  the  Roman  laws  regulating 
the  property  of  corporations/ 

The  modern  episcopal  system,  apart  from  the  retention  of  the 
name  "  bishop,"  has  fewest  points  of  resemblance  to  what  we 
find  in  the  ancient  ecclesiastical  manuals  we  have  been  studying  ; 
but  the  germs  of  the  mediaeval  and  modern  episcopacy  are 
there  in  the  power  which  the  primitive  bishop  possessed  of 
delegating  functions  which  were  peculiarly  his,  such  as  baptizing 
and  celebrating  the  Holy  Communion,  to  his  elders  and  even  to 
his  deacons. 

^  Compare  Ramsay,  The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire,  p.  431.  INIany 
illustrations  of  the  legal  principles  and  their  effects  on  the  tenure  of  Church 
property  laid  dovnx  by  Professor  Ramsay  may  be  found  not  only  \\ithin 
the  Turkish  Empire,  but  in  the  Tributary  Indian  States,  such  as  the  Nizam's 
Territories,  where  the  IMohammedan  law  rules. 


Ministry  Changing  to  Priesthood 


263 


CHAPTER    VII 

MINISTRY  CHANGING   TO   PRIESTHOOD 

DURING  the  third  century,  it  may  be  said  during  the  middle 
third  of  that  century,  there  are  clear  traces  of  a  general 
change  insinuating  itself  into  men's  minds  and  finding  expression 
in  language,  in  the  way  of  thinking  of  the  Church  and  of  the 
relation  of  the  ministry  to  the  Church.  This  is  commonly  spoken 
of  as  the  change  of  the  ministry  into  a  mediating  priesthood, 
standing  between  the  people  and  God.  But  this  manner  of 
regarding  the  whole  silent  movement  gives  a  very  inadequate 
and  one-sided  representation  of  the  real  meaning  of  the  change, 
and  of  the  conceptions  which  it  embodied.  The  idea  that  the 
ministry  is  a  priesthood  was  there,  but  the  main  thought  was 
much  more  the  potver  of  the  priest  than  his  mediation.  The 
power  and  the  authority  of  the  ministry  and  especially  of  the 
chiefs  of  the  ministry  over  the  Christian  people  was  the  central 
conception.  It  finds  expression  in  Cyprian's  repeated  quotation 
of  the  Old  Testament  text :  "  And  the  man  that  doeth  presump- 
tuously, in  not  hearkening  to  the  priest  that  standeth  to  minister 
there  before  the  Lord  thy  God,  or  unto  the  judge,  even  that 
man  shall  die  ;  and  thou  shalt  put  away  the  evil  from  Israel. 
And  all  the  people  shall  hear  and  fear,  and  do  no  more  pre- 
sumptuously." ^  It  is  this  change  and  what  it  implies  that 
concerns  us  now. 

It  may  be  briefly  expressed  by  saying  that  the  two  separate 

'  Deut.  xvii.  12,  13  ;    Cyprian,  Epist.  iii.  1  (Ixiv.) ;   iv.  4  (Ixi.) ;    xliii.  7 
(xxxix.)  ;    lix.  4  (liv.)  ;    Ixvi.  3  (Ixviii.). 

265 


266         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

conceptions  of  local  "  Church "  and  of  "  Church  universal " 
became  more  precise,  and  that  precision  of  thought  was  given  by 
new  ideas  about  the  relation  in  which  the  office-bearers  stood 
to  the  community.  The  Church  was  defined  by  the  ministry 
in  a  way  that  it  had  not  been  in  earlier  times. 

So  far  as  the  local  "  church "  is  concerned  the  Christian 
thought,  which  in  earlier  times  had  dwelt  upon  the  picture  of 
saints  and  brethren  living  together  the  Christian  life,  now  dwelt 
upon  the  controlling  power  of  those  who  governed.  The  Church, 
which  was  in  earlier  days  a  "  brotherhood  of  saints,"  became 
a  community  over  whom  a  bishop  presided.  It  was  defined, 
not  so  much  by  the  manner  of  life  led  by  its  members,  as  by  the 
government  which  ruled  over  them.  The  train  of  thought  was 
reversed.  It  was  no  longer — people  worshipping  and  some 
of  them  leading  the  common  devotions,  saints  believing  and  some 
among  them  instructing  and  admonishing  ;  it  became — teachers 
who  imparted  and  pupils  who  received,  priests  who  interceded 
and  sinners  who  were  pardoned  through  the  intercession,  rulers 
who  commanded  and  subjects  who  were  bound  to  obey. 

The  thought  of  the  universal  visible  Church  underwent  an 
analogous  transformation.  It  wasjrio^ longer  the  wide  brother- 
hood of  all  who  professed  the  name  of  Jesus,  and  lived  the  life 
of  new  obedience  demanded  fi'om  His  disciples.  It  became  a 
federation  of  local  churches,  who  believed  in  the  same  verities, 
the  truth  of  which  was  guaranteed  by  legitimate  rulers,  and 
whose  members  yielded  an  implicit  obedience  to  the  bishop  at 
the  head  of  every  local  "  church."  It  was  the  federation  of 
churches  which  excluded  heretics  and  rebels. 

In  the  earlier  days  the  local  Christian  communities  were 
companies  of  men  and  women  who  called  themselves  the  brethren 
and  the  saints  or  holy  persons,  and  these  words  expressed  the 
relations  in  which  they  stood  to  each  other  and  to  the  world 
around  them.  Fellowship  as  with  brothers,  and  a  fellowship 
united  in  holiness,  were  the  main  thoughts  present  to  the  minds 
of  the  earliest  Christians  when  the  word  Church  was  used  to 


CHANGES  IN  THE  MEANING  OF  CHURCH      267 

denote  either  the  individual  community  or  the  wide  brotherhood 
of  believers. 

The  idea  in  the  minds  of  Christians  united  together  in  a  local 
community  was  that  they  were  called  upon  to  live  a  new  and 
a  holy  life.  They  had  marked  out  for  themselves  what  was 
meant  by  this  holy  life,  with  its  duties  to  be  lovingly  fulfilled 
and  sins  to  be  resolutely  shunned  ;  and  this  chart  of  the  Christian 
life  is  to  be  found  in  manuals  like  the  Didache  with  its  two  ways, 
all  of  which  treat  of  the  private  as  well  as  of  the  communal 
life.  There  was  also  a  feeling  throughout  the  churches  that, 
while  for  the  ordinary  and  lesser  sins  to  which  men  are  prone, 
there  must  be  confession,  sorrow,  and  certain  external  signs  of 
sorrow,  and  while  for  others  there  was  to  be  suspension  for 
longer  or  shorter  time  from  the  Holy  Supper,  some  sins  were  so 
very  heinous  that  those  who  committed  them  had  placed  them- 
selves outside  the  communion  of  the  brethren  so  long  as  life  lasted. 
No  limits  were  placed  on  the  forgiveness  of  God,  but  Christians 
believed  that  if  any  of  their  number  fell  into  sins  of  more  than 
ordinary  gravity,  no  amount  of  penitence,  however  sincere, 
entitled  the  Church  to  permit  these  fallen  brethren  to  return 
to  the  inner  fellowship  of  the  Christian  brotherhood.  Such 
sinners  had  to  manifest  a  life-long  repentance,  and  could  never 
hope  to  be  more  than  catechumens.  TertuUian  has  given  a 
list  of  these  deadliest  sins,  but  it  is  not  Ukely  that  such  lists  were 
always  the  same,  for  there  is  no  trace  of  any  settled  rule  or 
theory.  Only,  each  Christian  community  felt  that  it  must  keep 
itself  pure  and  merit  its  title  of  "  the  saints."  '     Ordinarily 

I  Compare  Tertullian,  Against  Marcion,  iv.  9.  The  Canons  oj  Basil, 
though  very  much  later  than  the  period  now  described,  retain  ideas  which 
may  enable  us  to  conceive  the  attitude  of  the  early  Cliristian  society. 
They  declare  that  a  murderer  must  be  excluded  from  the  society  for 
twenty  years  ;  a  homicide  for  ten  years,  which  are  to  be  spent  in  the  fol- 
lowing way — two  years  in  mourning,  three  j^^ears  admitted  to  the  meeting 
for  exhortation,  and  five  years  admitted  among  the  faithful  but  not  al- 
lowed to  come  forward  and  partake  of  the  Holy  Communion.  For  one  who 
has  been  baptized  and  has  lapsed  from  the  faith,  the  penitence  must  be 
lifo  long,  and  the  penitent  is  to  be  allowed  to  communicate  only  when  ho 


268  MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO   PRIESTHOOD 

those  who  were  guilty  of  such  heinous  sins  had  to  remain  for 
life  in  the  condition  of  catechumens,  and  could  never  hops  to 
be  re-admitted  to  the  inner  circle  of  believers.  If,  however,  a 
brother,  beHeved  to  have  the  prophetic  gift,  spoke  on  behalf  of 
a  penitent,  and  announced  that  it  was  the  will  of  God  that  he 
should  be  pardoned,  then,  and  then  only,  an  exception  was 
made/ 

All  the  Christian  communities,  although  they  felt  that  they 
belonged  to  one  great  Church,  were  not  linked  together  by  any 
distinctive  polity,  however  indefinite.  All  the  churches  of 
Christ,  Tertullian  tells  us,  were  one  great  Church,  because  they 
gave  each  other  the  salutation  of  peace,  because  they  regarded 
each  other  as  brethren,  and  because  they  practised  the  inter- 
change of  familiar  hospitality."*  That  was  what  bound  them 
together,  and  made  them  feel  and  be  one  ;  not  any  external 
polity,  however  slight.  They  maintained  a  close  fellowship 
by  means  of  intercommunication,  by  the  interchange  of  letters 
and  messengers,  and  by  their  hospitality  towards  all  Christian 
travellers  who  passed  their  way.  This  constant  intercourse 
no  doubt  led  to  a  similarity  in  the  rules  for  holy  living  and  in 
modes  of  dealing  with  backsliders  ;  but  there  was  nothing  of 

is  on  his  deathbed.  Compare  Riedel's  Kirchenrechtsquellen  des  Patriarchats 
der  Alexandrien  (1900),  pp.  243,  244,  Tlie  sins  named  by  Tertullian 
are  : — Idolatry,  blasphemy,  murder,  adultery,  fornication,  fals£- witness 
and  fraud. 

'  Hermas,  Mandata,  iv.  3  ;    Visiones,  iii.  7  ;  Tertullian,  De  Pudicitia,  21. 

2  Tertullian,  De  Praescriptione  Haereticorum,  20 : — "  They  then  (the 
apostles)  in  like  manner  founded  Churches  in  every  city,  from  which  all 
the  other  Churches,  one  after  another,  derived  the  tradition  of  the  faith 
and  the  seeds  of  doctrine,  and  are  every  day  deriving  them,  that  they  may 
become  Churches.  Indeed  it  is  on  this  account  only  that  they  mil  be  able 
to  account  themselves  apostolic,  as  being  the  offspring  of  apostolic 
Churches.  .  .  .  Therefore  the  Churches,  although  they  are  so  many  and 
so  great,  comprise  but  the  one  primitive  Church  founded  by  the  apostles 
from  which  they  all  spring.  In  this  way  all  are  primitive,  and  all  are 
apostolic,  whilst  they  are  all  proved  to  be  one,  in  unity,  by  their  saluta- 
tion of  peace  (communicatio  pacis),  and  title  of  brotherhood,  and  bond  of 
hospitality  (contesseratio  hospitalitatis) — rights  which  no  other  rule  directs 
than  the  one  tradition  of  the  self -same  mystery." 


CHANGES  IN  THE  MEANING  OF  CHURCH       269 

a  common  polity  to  unite  them  as  the  various  parts  of  civil 
society  are  united  within  one  state.  No  doubt  the  advice  of 
one  Church  was  frequently  asked,  and  acted  upon  by  another 
in  matters  of  difficulty  and  in  times  of  trial.  We  have  an  example 
of  such  a  thing  in  the  letter  of  the  Roman  Church  to  the  Corin- 
thian, which  goes  by  the  name  of  the  First  Epistle  of  Clement. 
No  doubt  such  advice  was  received  and  attended  to  in  pro- 
portion as  the  Church,  offering  its  advice  or  appealed  to  for  its 
counsel,  had  showed  itself  worthy  of  deference  by  its  brotherly 
conduct  and  by  its  eminence.  No  Church  in  those  early  centuries 
showed  such  generosity  to  its  poorer  brethren  as  the  Roman 
Church  ;  besides  it  inhabited  the  world's  capital ;  it  was  be- 
lieved to  inherit  the  traditions  of  the  two  greatest  of  the  apostles 
— St.  Paul  and  St.  Peter.  It  held  the  position  of  the  wise  and 
generous  elder  brother  in  the  brotherhood  of  churches,  but 
there  was  no  acknowledged  ecclesiastical  pre-eminence.' 

The  situation,  therefore,  may  be  thus  expressed  :  there  were 
thousands  of  churches,  most  of  them  single  congregations, 
which  nevertheless  were  one  Church,  not  because  they  had 
agreed  in  any  formal  way  to  become  one,  not  because  there 
was  any  polity  linking  them  together  in  one  great  whole,  but 
because  they  had  the  mimistakeable  feeling  that  they  belonged 
to  one  brotherhood. 

They  lived  in  the  immediate  presence  of  eternity,  on  the 
threshold  of  the  blessed  and  real  life  which  awaited  them,  when 
the  period  of  their  probation  in  this  world  was  ended  ;  and  every 
Christian  community  had  the  feeling  that  it  was  its  business 
by  a  strict  discipline  to  preserve,  in  the  pure  life  of  the  members 
of  the  little  brotherhood,  a  foreshadowing  of  the  life  which  awaited 
them  when  the  Father  should  call  them  home  to  Himself.  Mean- 
while they  were  in  the  presence  of  a  hostile  and  evil  world- 

^  Clement,  1  Epist.  v.  4-6  ;  Ignatius,  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  preface 
Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccles.  II.  xxv.  8  ;  IV.  xxiii.  10  ;  V.  xxiii.,  xxiv.  ;  VII.  v.  2 
Irenaeus,  Against  Heresies,  III.  i.  iii.  ;  Tertullian,  De  Praescript.  24 
Scorpiace,  15 ;   Agaitist  Marcion,  IV.  5. 


270         MINISTRY  CHANGING   TO  PRIESTHOOD 

power,  which  was  under  the  dominion  of  sin,  and  which  mani- 
fested itself  to  them  in  the  persecuting  pagan  state.  That 
was  the  first  stage.  Doctrine  could  scarcely  be  said  to  exist, 
and  doctrinal  divisions  were  therefore  almost  impossible.  No 
doubt  their  teachers  and  leaders  occasionally  warned  them 
against  strange  teachings,  but  these  were  limited  to  individuals 
or  to  small  companies,  and  hardly  impressed  the  imagination. 

When  the  Gnostic  teachers  gathered  their  followers  into 
companies  large  enough  to  attract  attention,  and  above  all  when 
Marcion,  with  his  organizing  genius,  had  estabhshed  Marcionite 
Christian  communities  almost  everywhere,  the  situation  became 
changed.  The  Christians  were  now  divided  among  themselves. 
The  Christian  brotherhood  was  set  over  against,  not  simply  the 
pagan  state,  but  also  against  false  brethren  who  did  not  accept 
the  traditions  of  the  apostles  nor  the  common  simple  verities  of 
the  faith.  Christianity  now  imphed  more  than  a  life  lived  in  the 
presence  of  God  and  Christ ;  it  meant  a  doctrine  to  be  protected 
by  a  creed  or  a  form,  more  or  less  fixed,  of  intellectual  beliefs. 
The  possession  of  a  common  form  of  creed  in  which  the  simple 
verities  of  the  faith  were  stated  could  not  fail  to  give  the  ''  great  " 
Church  accepting  it  something  more  of  an  outward  polity. 
The  succession  of  office-bearers  in  the  churches  was  the  guarantee 
for  the  correctness  of  the  tradition  suggested  by  Irenaeus, 
urged  by  Tertullian,  and  apparently  accepted  by  all  v/ho  were 
neither  Gnostics  nor  Marcionites,  nor  any  of  the  smaller  separate 
bodies  of  Christians.  Tertullian  in  the  De  Praescripiione,  as 
may  be  seen  in  the  quotation  given  in  the  note,^  links  the  common 
tradition,  its  guarantee  in  the  succession  of  office-bearers,  the 
name  of  brethren,  the  salutation  of  peace,  and  the  bond  of  hospi- 
tality all  together,  and  there  are,  though  in  a  very  indefinite 
kind  of  way,  the  beginnings  of  a  polity. 

Still  the  existence  of  the  creed  did  not  give  the  churches 
which  accepted  it  an  homogenous  external  polity  in  any  thing 
like  the  modern  sense.     The  creed  was  the  law  for  the  individual 
^  Sec  above,  p.  208. 


CHANGES   IN  THE  MEANING   OF  CHURCH      271 

local  church,  and  the  local  church  was  not  joined  to  the  other 
churches  in  a  definite  federation,  still  less  in  a  corporate  union. 
The  old  thought  of  St.  Paul  '—fellowship  (/con'w;'/a)— still 
prevailed.  The  churches  refused  to  have  fellowship  with  pro- 
fessing Christians  and  with  communities  of  professing  Christians 
who  did  not  accept  the  same  verities  that  they  did,  and  they  had 
fellowship  and  intercommunion  with  societies  who  accepted  these 
verities.  The  increased  powers  given  to  office-bearers,  when 
they  were  made  the  guarantee  of  the  orthodox  faith,  were 
powers  to  be  exercised  within  the  communities  over  which  they 
presided,  and  did  not  give  them  any  rule  outside  the  local  churches 
they  governed,  whether  these  were  large  or  small.  Still  the  fact 
that  it  was  recognized  that  all  Christians  had  a  common  set  of 
convictions,  which  could  be  expressed  in  a  more  or  less  definite 
way  in  propositions,  gave  the  whole  brotherhood  of  churches 
something  of  a  polity  ;  and  the  thought  that  in  times  of  doubt 
or  difficulty  guidance  could  be  got  from  what  TertuUian  called 
"  apostolic  "  churches,  or  churches  where  the  original  apostles 
had  actually  taught,^  gave  these  churches  and  their  office- 
bearers a  certain  pre-eminence  which  claimed  and  received  the 
deference  of  all  the  rest. 

The  separation  and  secession  of  the  Montanists,  in  the  wider 
meaning  of  the  terni,^  still  further  altered  and  made  more  precise 
the  conception  of  the  Church.  It  must  always  be  remembered 
that  the  Montanists  were  not  driven  out,  but  separated  them- 
selves from  the  main  body  of  Christians,  They  claimed  to 
represent  the  apostolic  Church  ;  and  their  claim  was  based  quite 
as  much  on  the  persuasion  that  they  had  preserved  the  prophetic 
ministry  in  the  position  within  the  churches  in  which  it  had 
been  placed  by  the  apostles,  as  on  their  belief  that  they  were 
preserving  the  character  of  the  true  church  by  their  strictness 

^  Compare  above,  p.  24. 

2  Compare  TertuUian,  De  Pmescriptiotic,  xx.,  xxxii.  and  especially  xxxvi. 

3  That  is  the  Montanism  which  included  men  like  TertuUian.  Compare 
above  p.  -I'iS: 


272         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO   PRIESTHOOD 

of  discipline.  To  the  succession  of  office-bearers,  descended 
from  the  secondary  ministry  of  apostolic  times,  they  opposed 
the  succession  of  prophets  representing  the  superior  ministry 
of  the  apostolic  days.  The  Montanist  movement  had  this  result 
that  men  who  professed  to  live  according  to  the  commandments 
of  Jesus,  who  adhered  to  the  traditional  teaching  of  the  churches, 
who  had  the  three-fold  ministry,  were  nevertheless  found  out- 
side. They  had  separated  on  the  question  of  the  power  of  the 
office-bearers  at  the  head  of  the  local  churches  ;  they  had  in- 
sisted that  the  time-honoured  prophetic  ministry  should  retain 
its  old  supremacy  ;  they  had  especially  declared  that  in  the  case 
of  heinous  sins  it  belonged  to  the  prophetic  ministry,  and  not 
to  the  bishops,  to  declare  whether  such  sins  could  receive  the 
churches'  pardon.'  Their  opponents  had  joined  issue  with  them 
on  these  two  points.  They  asserted  that  a  true  prophet  would 
submit  himself  to  the  "  elders  who  were  in  the  succession," 
and  that,  while  the  Montanist  prophets  had  positively  refused 
to  admit  of  the  church's  pardon  being  extended  to  heinous 
sinners,^  yet  these  sinners  might  be  pardoned  on  confession 

^  TertuUian,  De  Pitdicitia,  21  : — "  The  power  of  loosing  and  binding 
committed  to  Peter  had  nothing  to  do  ^vith  the  capital  sins  of  beUevers  ; 
and  if  the  Lord  had  given  him  a  precept  that  he  must  grant  pardon  to  a 
brother  sinning  against  /u'm  even  seventy  times  seven-fold,  of  course  He 
would  have  commanded  him  to  '  bind ' — that  is  to  retain — nothing  sub- 
sequently, unless  perchance  such  sins  as  one  may  have  committed  against 
the  Lord  and  not  against  a  brother.  For  the  forgiveness  of  sins  com- 
mitted in  the  case  of  a  man  is  a  prejudgment  against  the  remission  of  sins 
against  God.  What  now  about  the  Church — your  psychic  Cliurch  ?  For 
in  accordance  with  the  person  of  Peter,  it  is  to  spiritual  men  that  this 
power  Avill  correspondingly  appertain,  either  to  an  apostle  or  else  to  a 
prophet.  For  the  Cliurch  itself  is,  properly  and  principally  the  Spirit 
Himself.  .  .  .  And  accordingly  the  '  Church,'  it  is  true,  will  forgive  sins  ; 
but  the  Church  of  the  Spirit,  by  a  spiritual  man ;  not  the  Church  which 
consists  of  a  number  of  bishops.  For  the  right  and  arbitrament  is  the 
Lord's,  not  the  servant's ;  God's  Himself  and  not  the  priest's."  Ter- 
tullian's  argument  is  that  the  power  was  given  to  Peter  because  he  was 
inspired  of  the  Father  to  confess  Christ.  He  was  a  spiritual  man.  Cf. 
Dollinger,  Hippolytus  and  CaUistus  (Eng.  Trans.),  pp.  116  f. 

^   TertuUian  tells  us  {De  Pudicitia,  21),  that  the  new  prophecy,  speak- 


CHANGES  IN  THE  MEANING  OF  CHURCH        273 

and  signs  of  sincere  repentance.  The  great  majority  of  the 
members  of  the  churches  had  followed  the  office-bearers,  and  the 
Montanist  movement  had  failed  to  arrest  the  course  of  the 
local  ministry  on  the  path  they  had  chosen  to  pursue.  It  was 
only  natural  that  an  unsuccessful  revolt  would  strengthen 
the  position  of  the  ministry  which  it  had  conspired  against. 
All  these  things  combined  to  place  the  office-bearers  in  a  position 
of  authority  they  had  never  before  occupied,  and  to  give  peculiar 
powers  to  the  bishops  who  were  the  chief  office-bearers.  The 
tendency  was  to  think  that  the  churches  were  summed  up  in 
their  bishops,  and  these  officials  thus  acquired  a  new  position  with 
reference  to  the  whole  Church. 

The  most  potent  cause  producing  this  change  of  sentiment 
with  regard  to  the  character  of  the  ministry  and  its  relation  to 
the  Church  was  the  attempt  to  come  to  some  accommodation 
with  the  world  lying  round  the  Christian  communities  in  order 
to  justify  the  plea  that  Christians  were  entitled  to  the  toleration 
extended  to  all  other  religions.  This  consideration  was  always 
accompanied  by  the  other  that  the  Church  wished  to  keep  hold 
on  crowds  of  adherents,  who  in  the  years  of  peace  from  perse- 
cution ^  were  flocking  to  join  it,  and  who  could  not  be  retained 
if  the  old  hard  conditions  or,  perhaps  one  ought  to  say,  the  earlier 
high  standard  of  Christian  life,  were  insisted  upon.  These  two 
motives  invariably  acted  together,  and  are  to  be  found  working 
in  such  churches  as  those  of  Rome  and  Corinth  in  the  beginning 
of  the  third  century.^  The  first  practical  consequence  of  these 
ideas  was  to  alter  the  thought  and  conditions  of  penitence.  In 
the  earlier' times,  as  has  been  said,  when  a  Christian  felMnto 
such  grievous  sins  as  idolatry,  murder,  adultery,  fornication 
and  some  others,  he  could  never  be  received  again  into  full 

ing  in  the  name  of  the  Spirit  had  said  "  The  church  has  the  power  to 
forgive  sins ;   but  I  will  not  do  it  lest  they  commit  others." 

'^  That  is  in  the  years  between  the  persecution  under  Severus  and  that 
under  Decius. 

2  Earlier  in  the  Corinthian  Church,  if  we  are  to  beUeve  Eusebius.    Com- 
pare his  Hist.  Ecd.  IV.  xxiii.  6. 

CM.  18 


274         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

communion,  but  had  to  remain  in  the  position  of  a  catechumen, 
permitted  to  wait  in  the  ante-chamber  but  never  admitted 
within  the  family  abode  until  death  was  at  hand.  Gradually 
the  practice  was  softened  to  the  extent  that,  on  due  manifesta- 
tion of  sorrow,  a  second  trial  of  the  full  Christian  life  was  allowed, 
but  a  second  fall  was  not  to  be  forgiven.'  In  all  probability 
this  remained  the  general  rule  till  the  third  decade  of  the  third 
century,  when  Calixtus,  the  bishop  of  Rome,  introduced  a 
change  which  met  with  the  fierce  opposition  of  Tertullian  and 
Hippolytus.^  He,  or  rather  the  Roman  Church  of  which  he  was 
the  head,  entered  on  a  policy  of  relaxation.^  It  was  asserted  that 
the  church,  through  its  office-bearers,  was  entitled  to  proclaim 
God's  pardon  for  any  sins,  however  heinous,  due  signs  of  sorrow 
being  accepted  by  the  office-bearers  as  sufficient.'^  It  was 
announced  by  an  edict  posted  up  in  the  church,  that  pardon 
would  be  bestowed  on  these  terms  for  all  sins  of  the  flesh,  and 
that  penitents  would  be  restored  to  Church  communion.  It 
appears  to  be  almost  certain  that  this  innovation  contained 


^  This  statement  appears  to  be  borne  out  by  what  Tertuliian  says  in 
his  tract  on  Rcpentayice  : — "  In  the  vestibule  God  has  stationed  repentance 
the  second  to  open  to  such  as  knock  ;  but  now  once  for  all,  because  now 
for  a  second  time  ;  but  never  more,  for  tlie  last  time  it  had  been  in  vain  " 
(7). 

2  Tertullian's  attack  is  to  be  found  in  his  work  on  Modesty  (De  Pudicitia), 
and  Hippolytus'  in  his  work  against  Heresies  (Philosopliumena),  ix.  6,  7. 
It  has  been  commonly  said  that  the  bishop  of  Rome  attacked  by  Ter- 
tullian was  Zephyrinus  ;  compare  Langen,  Geschichte  der  rom.  Kirclie,  i. 
217  ff.,  and  Dollinger,  Hippolytus  and  Callistiis  (1876),  Eng.  Trans.,  p.  117  ; 
but  see  Harnack,  Herzog's  Eeal-Encyclopaedie,  x.  656,  and  in  the  Zeit- 
schrifl  f'ilr  Kirchengeschiclite  (1876-77),  p.  582. 

3  There  is  no  doubt  that  as  Dollinger  says  {Hippolytus  and  Callistus 
(Eng.  Trans.),  p.  117)  the  power  of  a  bishop  in  the  beginning  of  the  third 
century  was  anything  but  absolute,  being  limited  by  both  the  elders  and 
the  laity.  "  No  one  who  knows  the  life  of  the  Church  at  that  time  A\'ill 
believe  that  Callistus  introduced  a  practice  previously  unkno\vn  in  Rome 
against  the  will  of  his  presbytery  (session)." 

4  Calixtus  openly  claimed  this  power  to  pardon,  because  he  was  the 
successor  of  St.  Peter^  to  whom  Christ  had  given  power  to  remit  sins 
(Tertullian,  De  Pudicitia,  21). 


CHANGES   IN  THE  MEANING   OF  CHURCH       275 

two  things ;  the  first  being  the  general  statement  of  the  power 
of  the  Church  exercised  tLrough  its  office-bearers  to  restore 
all  persons  to  Chur\;h  communion,  no  matter  how  heinous  the 
sin  had  been  into  which  they  had  fallen,  and  the  second  being 
the  resolution  on  the  part  of  the  Roman  Church  to  make  use 
of  this  general  power  in  respect  to  sins  of  the  flesh.  Of  course 
there  was  no  attempt  to  coerce  other  churches  to  follow  the 
example  of  the  Roman  Church,  and  many  churches  did  not;^ 
Some  North  African  churches  kept  to  the  old  practice  on  to 
the  time  of  Cyprian,^  but  it  is  undoubted  that  the  Roman  example 
was  largely  followed.  The  statements  in  Hippolytus  and  Ter- 
tullian  seem  to  warrant  the  conclusion  that  this  relaxation  from 
the  older  sterimess  was  made  because  without  it  large  numbers 
of  Christians  could  not  be  restrained  from  going  back  to 
heathenism.^ 

There  was  no  doubt  a  thoroughly  evangelical  element  in  this 
manifesto  of  the  Roman  Church.'*  It  was  based  on  the  evan- 
gelical truth  that  God  has  commanded  to  his  ministering  servants 
to  proclaim  that  He  is  not  willing  that  any  should  perish,  that 

^  As  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century  the  Spanish  Church 
insisted  on  visiting  certain  sins  with  perpetual  excommunication,  while  the 
council  of  Ancyra  held  about  the  same  time  in  the  east  set  a  hmited  penalty 
on  the  very  sins  for  which  the  council  of  Elvira  had  decreed  a  perpetual 
excommunication — so  impossible  is  it  to  make  general  statements  about 
ecclesiastical  usages  in  the  early  centuries. 

3  Cyprian,  Epistle,  Iv.  21  (li.). 

3  Compare  TertuUian's  jjlirases  in  the  De  Pudicitia; — "A  profitable 
fickleness  .  .  ,"  ;  "easier  to  err  with  the  majority"  (1);  his  statement  of 
sins  for  which  it  is  proper  to  provide  repentance  (7),  etc.  Compare  Hip- 
polytus on  Heresies,  ix.  7.  Although  the  account  of  Hippolytus  must  be 
taken  with  some  caution  as  the  statements  of  a  bitter  opponent,  j'et  it 
seems  clear  that  Calixtus  expected  to  detach  many  from  the  churches  of 
his  opponents  in  Rome  by  this  policy  of  relaxation  from  the  old  strict- 
ness ;  and  that  his  policy  was  successful.  There  must  have  been  four  or 
five  different  bodies  of  Christians  in  Rome  at  this  time,  each  esteeming 
itself  to  be  the  Church  of  Christ. 

4  An  interesting  parallel  might  be  dra^vn  between  the  evangeUcal  root 
in  the  sixteenth -century  doctrine  of  indulgence  and  the  evangehcal  basis 
of  this  manifesto.    Compare  my  Liither,  p.  62. 


276         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO   PRIESTHOOD 

His  promises  in  Christ  fp»n  be  trusted  in  by  the  most  heinous 
sinners  and  backsliders.  But  in  ^all  the  circumstances  of  the 
times  and  of  the  case,  it  took  a  very  unevangehcal  shape,  and 
was  worked  out  by  Cyprian  into  the  beginnings  of  the  mediaeval 
doctrine  of  penance.  In  the  shape  it  took  it  inevitably  led  the 
people  to  regard  the  ofl&ce-bearers  of  the  Church,  and  especially 
the  bishops,  as  if  they  were  in  God's  place,  and  it  ascribed  to  the 
bishops  the  power  of  actually  pardoning  and  not  simply  of  pro- 
claiming the  pardon  of  God.^  On  the  other  hand,  the  Church 
lost  her  old  idea  that  she  was  the  company  of  the  saints  or  the 
actively  holy  people  ;  and  the  new  feeling  grew  that  the  Church 
was  the  institution  within  which  God  had  placed  the  means  of 
acquiring  holiness,  and  that  these  means  were  at  the  disposal 
of  the  bishops  or  the  heads  of  the  Christian  communities,  and 
could  be  reached  only  through  them.  Hence  the  office-bearers, 
and  more  especially  the  bishops — the  men  who  had  already 
been  declared  to  be  the  guardians  of  the  essential  Christian 
verities — now  came  to  be  regarded  also  as  the  keepers  or  guardians 
of  that  peace  of  God  which  comes  from  the  pardon  of  sin.  They 
were  the  persons  to  whom  it  was  necessary  to  go  in  order 
to  know  with  certainty  the  truths  of  the  Christian  religion,  and 
only  through  them  could  be  acquired  that  saintly  character 
which  was  desirable,  but  which  was  no  longer  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  membership  within  the  Christian  Church.  So  the  be- 
ginnings of  a  wide  gulf  were  dug  between  the  clergy  and  the 
laity,  and  the  conception  began  to  grow  that  the  one  duty  of 
the  laity  in  the  presence  of  the  clergy  was  that  of  simple  obedi- 
ence. Add  to  this  the  ever-present  expectation  that  the  day 
was  approaching  when  the  Church  was  to  enter  into  an  alliance 
with  the  hitherto  persecuting  state  and  to  find  a  peaceful  shelter 
under  its  protection ;  the  growing  conviction  that  the  action 
of  all  the  various  Christian  Churches  ought  to  be  as  harmonious 

'^  The  proclamation  of  Calixtus,  as  quoted  by  Tertullian,  was  :  /  remit 
to  such  as  have  discharged  repentance,  the  sins  of  adultery  and  fornication 
{De  Pudicitki,  1). 


CHANGES  IN  THE  MEANING   OF  CHURCH       277 

as  possible,  and  that  whatever  step  was  taken  by  one  ought 
to  be  taken  by  all ;  and  the  feeling  that  the  Christian  Churches 
ought  to  be  divisions  of  a  well-drilled  army  marching  in  step 
towards  the  earthly  paradise  of  an  alliance  with,  and  therefore 
of  a  conquest  over,  the  hitherto  persecuting  power,  and  it  is 
possible  to  have  some  estimate  of  the  changes  which  the  con- 
ception of  the  Church  and  of  the  ministry  were  undergoing 
in  the  middle  of  this  third  century.  At  the  same  time  it  is  easy 
to  make  too  much  of  the  power  exercised  by  the  bishops  of  the 
first  half  of  the  third  century.  The  bishops  of  these  days  were 
not  the  great  potentates  that  one  is  apt  to  imagine  them  to  be 
from  the  language  and  phrases  used  by  many  modern  historians. 
They,  all  of  them,  had  to  carry  their  people,  and,  above  all, 
their  elders  or  presbyters  with  them,  in  any  change  they  sug- 
gested. 

Canons  which  belong  to  the  early  part  of  the  third  century, 
like  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  may  say  little  about  the  rights 
and  much  about  the  duties  of  the  laity.  They  may  concern 
themselves  with  the  layman's  duty  to  pray  in  private,  to  come 
to  Church  regularly,  to  offer  the  firstfruits,  and  may  enjoin 
his  ^vife  to  be  careful  to  prepare  the  oblations.  They  may  pro- 
hibit him  from  taking  any  part  in  public  worship  or  from  pre- 
siding even  at  an  agape.  They  may  appear  to  leave  him  no 
rights  in  the  Church  whatsoever  save  that  of  choosing  his  pastor. 
But  we  know  that  long  after  this  few  things  were  done  in  any 
local  church  without  their  being  approved  by  a  comicil  of  the 
whole  people  and  clergy,  plebs  and  ordo  ;  and  that  this  congre- 
gational meeting  existed  and  exercised  its  powers  from  the  days 
of  St.  Paul  to  those  of  Cyprian.  The  modern  associations 
connected  with  the  word  "  bishop  "  impose  upon  us,  and  the 
misleading  phrase  "  monarchical  bishop  "  adds  to  our  illusions. 
The  fact  was  that  this  "  monarch  "  was  in  the  vast  majority  of 
cases  the  pastor  of  a  congregation  of  a  few  score  of  families, 
that  no  imperial  legislation  had  as  yet  compelled  the  payment 
of  tithes  by  law,  nor  had  conferred  a  high  social  position  upon 


278         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

any  pastor  or  bishop  who  happened  to  be  at  the  head  of  the 
Christian  societies  in  cities  which  had  been  the  provincial  centres 
of  the  imperial  cult.^  When  Christianity  became  the  recognized 
religion  of  the  Roman  Empire  ;  when  imperial  edicts  confirmed 
ecclesiastical  legislation ;  when  imperial  troops  were  employed 
to  hunt  down  Marcionite,  Montanist  or  Donatist  nonconformists, 
the  state  of  things  became  different.  But  until  we  get  to  the 
middle  of  the  fourth  century  the  Christian  pastors  were  too 
dependent  on  their  people  to  be  great  potentates  and  irre- 
sponsible rulers.  It  was  the  theory  that  was  changing — that 
is  the  important  thing  to  be  remembered. 

This  new  theory  of  the  position  and  authority  of  the  office- 
bearers in  the  Christian  churches  was  so  novel,  and  so  opposed 
to  the  old  traditions  of  primitive  Christianity,  that  an  extra- 
ordinary sanction  was  needed  to  support  it,  and  in  the  nature  of 
things  the  sanction  had  to  come  down  from  the  earliest  days. 
It  is  here  that  the  idea  of  an  "  Apostolic  Succession,"  in  the 
modern  Roman  and  Anglican  sense,  first  makes  its  appearance. 
It  is  a  conception  which  had  its  origin  in  the  brains  of  leaders 
of  the  Roman  Church,  and  although  it  was  adopted  and  de- 
fended by  Cyprian,  it  has  never  ceased  to  be  associated  with 
Roman  claims  and  to  fit  most  naturally  into  Roman  theories. 
To  understand  it  one  must  remember,  what  is  continually  for- 
gotten, that  the  great  men  who  built  up  the  Western  Church 
were  almost  all  trained  Roman  lawyers.  TertuUian,  Cyprian, 
Augustine,  to  say  nothing  of  many  of  the  most  distinguished 
Roman  bishops,  were  all  men  whose  early  training  had  been 
that  of  a  Roman  lawyer — a  training  which  moulded  and  shaped 
all  their  thinking,  whether  theological  or  ecclesiastical.  The 
framework  of  Roman  law  supported  their  thoughts  about  Chris- 
tian organization  and  about  Christian  doctrines.  They  in- 
stinctively regarded  all  questions  as  a  great  Roman  lawyer 
would.  They  had  the  lawyer's  craving  for  regular  precedents, 
for  elaborate  legal  fictions  to  bridge  time  and  connect  the  present 
^  Compare  below,  p.  352  ff. 


APOSTOLIC  SUCCESSION  279 

v/ith  the  past.  They  had  the  lawyer's  idea  that  the  primary 
duty  hiid  upon  them  was  to  enforce  obedience  to  authority, 
and  especially  to  that  authority  which  expressed  itself  in  external 
institutions.  Apostolic  succession,  in  the  dogmatic  sense  of 
that  ambiguous  term,  is  the  legal  fiction  required  by  the  legal 
mind  to  connect  the  growing  conceptions  of  the  authority  of 
the  clergy  with  the  earlier  days  of  Christianity.  It  served  the 
Christian  lawyer  in  much  the  same  way  that  another  curious 
legal  fiction  assisted  the  pagan  civilian.  The  latter  insisted 
that  the  government  of  the  Emperors  from  Augustus  to  Dio- 
cletian was  the  prolongation  of  the  old  repubhcan  constitution  ; 
the  former  imagined  that  the  rule  of  bishops  was  the  prolongation 
through  the  generations  of  the  inspired  guidance  of  the  original 
apostles  who  were  the  planters  of  the  Church. 

A  legal  fiction  has  generally  some  historical  basis  to  start  from. 
The  basis  of  the  fiction  in  civil  law  was  the  fact  that  the  emperors, 
while  wielding  almost  absolute  personal  authority,  did  so  in 
accordance  with  republican  forms  inasmuch  as  they  were 
invested  by  the  senate  with  almost  all  the  offices  which  under 
the  repubhc  had  been  distributed  among  a  number  of  persons. 
The  fiction  in  ecclesiastical  government  had  also  its  basis  of 
fact.  The  apostles  had  founded  many  of  the  churches,  and  their 
first  converts  or  others  suitable  had  become  the  first  office- 
bearers. There  had  been  a  succession  of  leaders,  the  char- 
acteristics of  leadership,  as  has  been  explained,  undergoing  some 
striking  changes  in  the  course  of  the  second  century.  All  these 
successions  of  office-bearers  could  be  traced  back  to  the  founda- 
tion of  the  chm'ches  in  which  they  existed,  and  therefore  to  the 
missionaries,  whether  apostles  or  apostolic  men,  who  had  founded 
them.  This  was  the  historical  thread  on  which,  in  the  end,  v/as 
strmig  the  gigantic  figment  called  apostolic  succession — a  strange 
compomid  of  minimum  of  fact  and  maximum  of  theory. 

The  beginnings  of  the  theory  are  easily  discernible,  and  have 
been  already  explained.  Irenaeus  seized  upon  the  undoubted 
fact  of  successive  generations  of  office-bearers  going  back  to  the 


280         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO   PRIESTHOOD 

apostolic  founders  of  certain  churches  in  order  to  find  a  guarantee 
for  the  true  Christian  doctrine.  To  make  assurance  doubly 
sure,  he  added  a  theory  to  his  fact — this,  namely,  that  these 
office-bearers  who  were  in  the  succession  had  a  charisma  veri- 
tatis.  According  to  the  ideas  of  the  time  there  was  a  minimum 
of  fact  in  the  added  theory,  for  many  of  the  pastors  of  these 
primitive  churches  were  prophets  and  had  the  charisma.  This 
made  it  easier  to  suppose  that  what  belonged  to  some  pastors 
personally  was  the  property  of  all  officially.  The  result  was  that 
Christian  leaders  had  a  short  and  easy  method  of  dealing  with 
Gnostics  and  others.^  Moreover,  when  the  leaders  became  the 
guardians  of  sound  teaching  they  acquired  additional  magisterial 
powers  within  the  communities  over  which  they  presided.  But 
neither  Irenaeus,  nor  Tertullian  who  adopted  and  extended 
his  theory,  ever  claimed  that  the  leaders  of  the  churches  who 
were  in  the  succession  stood  in  the  same  position  to  the  churches 
of  the  end  of  the  second  and  beginning  of  the  third  centuries 
as  that  held  by  the  apostles  in  the  middle  of  the  first.  If  they 
believed  that  the  apostles  were  the  mediators  between  Jesus 
and  the  Church  they  were  also  firmly  convinced  that  the  Holy 
Spirit  was  imparted  to  the  whole  membership,  and  was  not  the 
peculiar  possession  of  the  leaders  of  the  communities  because 
they  were  in  the  succession  from  the  apostles.  The  idea  ap- 
peared earliest  in  the  Roman  Church.  So  far  as  I  am  aware, 
the  earliest  claim  of  this  kind  was  made  by  HipjDolytus  in  his 
struggle  with  Calixtus  in  Rome  ;  and  Calixtus,  the  head  of  one 
of  the  rival  factions,  was  not  slow  to  adopt  the  same  arrogant 
position.  The  former  made  use  of  the  idea  of  an  apostolic 
succession  to  strengthen  his  position  when  he  tried  to  show  that 
his  rival  was  a  heretic  ;  and  the  latter  used  it  to  warrant  him  in 
issuing  decrees  which  relaxed  the  ancient  discipline  in  the  hope 
of  attracting  to  his  own  congregation  men  who  felt  the  rules  of 
Christian  living  laid  down  by  Hippolytus  too  hard  for  their 
weakness.  These  were  the  edifying  surroundings  from  amidst 
^  Compare  above,  p.  224  ff. 


APOSTOLIC  SUCCESSION  281 

which  came  the  first  full  statement  of  the  claim  to  apostohc 
succession.^  The  theory  may  be  older  in  the  Roman  Church 
than  this  its  first  distinct  statement.^ 

From  the  time  that  this  doctrine  of  apostolic  succession 
comes  into  being  in  the  West  on  to  its  full  statement  by  Cyprian, 
its  use  is  the  same.  It  is  appealed  to  as  the  ground  for  the  as- 
sumption of  powers  of  command  on  the  part  of  the  bishops  or 
pastors.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  while  the  idea  of  a 
succession  is  to  be  found  in  the  East,  it  took  an  altogether 
different  shape  from  the  formal  legal  Roman  dogma.  There 
is  no  mention  of  an  apostolic  succession  of  chief  pastors  in  the 
first  six  books  of  the  Apostolic  Constitutions.  It  does  not  appear 
in  the  definition  or  description  of  the  Church  which  is  given 
in  the  first  book.^  Yet  the  office  of  bishop  or  pastor  is  dwelt 
upon  at  length.  He  is  always  looked  upon  as  the  minister  of 
a  congregation,  and  frequently  of  a  very  small  congregation,'* 
but  that  does  not  prevent  the  authors  heaping  up  phrases  to 

^  ''  But  none  will  refute  these  (heretics),  save  the  Holy  Spirit  bequeathed 
unto  the  Church,  which  the  apostles  having  in  the  first  instance  received, 
have  transmitted  to  those  Avho  rightly  believed.  But  we,  as  being  their 
successors,  and  as  j)arUcipators  in  this  grace,  high-priesthood,  and  office 
of  teaching,  as  well  as  being  reputed  guardians  of  the  Church,  will  not  be 
found  deficient  in  vigilance,  or  cUsposed  to  suppress  correct  doctrine," 
Refidation  of  all  Heresies  {philusopJmma),  I.,  proemium.  Hippolytus 
attacks  Calixtus  in  IX.  vi.  vii.  He  says  of  his  disciiiline :— "  For  he  is 
in  the  habit  of  attending  the  congregation  of  any  one  else,  who  is  called  a 
Christian  ;  should  a  man  commit  any  transgression,  the  sin,  they  say,  is 
not  reckoned  to  him,  provided  only  he  hurries  oft'  to  the  school  of  Calixtus," 
IX.  vii.  Cahxtus  is  the  bishop  of  Rome  whom  TertuUian  attacks  in  his 
De  Pudicitia,  and  whose  proclamation  he  quotes : — "  /  remit,  to  such  as 
have  discharged  repentance,  the  sins  of  adultery  and  fornication"  (1). 

-  Harnack,  whose  careful  chronological  investigations  have  led  him  to 
believe  that  the  Roman  list  of  bishops  or  pastors  may  be  trusted  from 
Anicetus  (about  155  a.d.)  or  from  Soter  (about  166),  while  no  Oriental  Ust 
can  be  trusted  before  the  third  century,  regards  this  as  an  indication  that 
the  theory  of  apostoUc  succession  in  its  begimiings  at  least  had  become 
established  in  Rome  at  a  comparatively  early  date.  Compare  Die  Chrono- 
logic  der  aUchristlichen  Literatur,  pp.  144-230  ;  and  his  History  of  Dogma, 
Eng.  Trans.  (1894-99).  ii.  70  n. 

3  Apostolic  Constitutions,  I.  i.  "*  Ibid.  II.  i 


282         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

describe  his  importance  and  the  respect  which  is  due  to  him 
from  his  people.'  The  elders,  "  the  counsellors  of  the  bishop  " 
— his  Kirk-Session — "  sustain  the  place  "  of  the  apostles  of  the 
Lord.^  The  formal  legal  Roman  mind  needed  a  precedent, 
in  the  shape  of  this  legal  fiction,  for  the  unwonted  domination 
which  the  chief  pastors  were  begimiing  to  claim.  The  Oriental, 
accustomed  to  arbitrary  government,  did  not  feel  that  usurpa- 
tion of  pov/er  required  to  be  cloaked  under  legal  fictions.  Yet 
in  the  East  we  find  a  trace  of  a  succession.  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria conceives  the  number  of  the  apostles  continually  recruited 
from  age  to  age  by  the  enrolment  of  men  who  have  attained 
to  a  "  gnostical  perfection,"  ^  and  who  are,  therefore,  the  true 

^  The  bishop  is  told  to  sustain  the  character  of  God  aniong  men,  "  as 
being  set  over  all  men,  over  priests,  kings,  rulers,  fathers,  children,  teachers, 
and  in  general  over  all  who  are  subject  "  to  him  ;  Apostolic  Constitutions, 
II.  xi.  ;  "  It  is  thy  privilege  (O  bishop),  to  govern  those  imder  thee,  but 
not  to  be  governed  by  them  "  (II.  xiv.) ;  the  laic  is  to  "  honour  him,  love 
him,  reverence  him  as  his  lord,  as  his  master,  as  the  high-priest  of  God,  as 
a  teacher  of  piety  ;  for  he  that  heareth  him  heareth  Christ ;  and  he  that 
rejecteth  him  rejecteth  Christ  "  (II.  xx.)  ;  "  the  bishop,  he  is  the  minister 
of  the  word,  the  keeper  of  knowledge,  the  mediator  between  God  and  yon 
in  the  several  parts  of  your  divine  worship  ;  he  is  your  ruler  and  governor  ; 
he  is  your  king  and  potentate  ;  he  is,  next  after  God,  5'our  earthly  god, 
who  has  a  right  to  be  honoured  by  you  "  (II.  xxvi.) ;  and  so  on  in  Oriental 
luxuriance  of  phrases.  It  is  not  that  there  was  no  sense  of  the  con- 
tinuity of  office  in  the  East: — "It  is  also  thy  duty,  O,  bishop,  to  have 
before  thine  eyes  the  examples  of  those  who  have  gone  before,  and  to 
apply  them  skilfully  to  the  cases  of  those  who  want  words  of  severity  or 
of  consolation"  (II.  xxii.). 

^  "  Let  also  a  double  portion  (of  the  firstfruits)  be  set  apart  for  the 
elders,  as  for  such  as  labour  continually  in  the  word  and  doctrine,  upon  the 
account  of  the  apostles  .of  our  Lord,  whose  flace  they  sustain,  as  the 
counsellors  of  the  bishop  and  the  crown  of  the  Church  (II.  xxviii.). 

3  Si^eaking  of  those  who  attain  to  "  gnostical  perfection,"  Clement  says 
{Stromata,  VI.  xiii.) : — "Luminous  already,  and  like  the  sun  shining  in 
the  exercise  of  beneficence,  he  speeds  by  righteous  knoAvledge  through  the 
love  of  God  to  the  sacred  abode,  like  as  the  apostles.  .  .  .  Those  then  also, 
who  have  exercised  themselves  in  the  Lord's  commandments,  and  lived 
perfectly  and  gnostically  according  to  the  Gospel  may  be  now  enrolled  in 
the  chosen  body  of  the  apostles.  Such  an  one  is  in  reality  an  elder  of  the 
Church,  and  a  true  deacon  of  the  will  of  God  if  he  do  and  teach  what  is 
the  Lord's  ;  not  as  being  chosen  by  men,  nor  regarded  as  righteous  because 


APOSTOLIC  SUCCESSION  283 

teachers  of  the  Chui'ch,  for  the  Christian  Neo-Platonist  of 
Alexandria  was  as  famiUar  with  the  thought  of  a  succession  of 
inspired  teachers/  as  the  minds  of  the  Roman  lawyers  Avho  built 
up  the  Church  in  the  West  were  saturated  with  legal  precedents 
and  the  need  for  the  visible  continuity  of  government  even 
though  a  legal  fiction  had  to  be  invented  to  show  it.  The  great 
Alexandrian  conceives  the  continuity  of  the  Church  to  exist  in 
the  succession  of  Christian  generations,  and  to  be  made  evident  by 
the  appearance  among  them  from  time  to  time  of  saintly  men  of 
apostolic  character  who  are  known  to  God,  and  whose  supreme 
importance  in  preserving  the  true  character  of  Christianity 
will  be  revealed  in  the  future.  This  he  deems  to  be  a  much 
better  guarantee  than  a  succession  of  office-bearers,  chosen  and 
ordained  by  fallible  men. 

Although  the  conception  that  the  heads  of  the  Christian 
churches  were  the  successors  of  the  apostles,  in  the  sense  that 
they  possessed  the  gifts  and  the  powers  of  the  original  apostles 
(now  thought  of  as  Twelve  only),  was  really  the  creation  of  the 
Roman  Church,  it  is  intimately  connected  with  Cyprian  of 
Carthage,"  who  gave  it  definiteness  as  a  dogmatic  idea.     This 

a  presbyter,  but  eru'olled  in  the  eldership  because  righteous.  Aiid  although 
here  upon  earth  he  be  not  honoured  with  the  cliief  seat,  he  will  sit  down 
on  the  four-and-twenty  thrones,  judging  the  people,  as  St.  John  says  in 
the  Apocalypse,  For  in  truth  the  covenant  of  salvation,  reaching  down 
to  us  from  the  foundation  of  the  world,  through  different  generations  and 
times,  is  one,  though  conceived  as  dilferent  in  respect  of  gifts." 

^  The  Neo-Platonists  beUeved  that  the  true  philosophy  was  preserved 
to  the  world  through  a  succession  of  divinely  inspired  teachers. 

2  The  best  edition  of  Cyprian's  works  is  that  of  J.  Hartel  (1868-71)  in 
the  Vienna  Corpus  Scriptorum  Ecclesiasticorum  LMinorum,  where  the  let- 
ters are  to  be  found  in  the  second  volume.  The  numbering  of  the  letters 
in  this  edition  is  the  same  as  in  the  Oxford  edition  of  1G82 ;  Migne's 
edition  has  a  different  numbering.  In  our  quotations  Migne's  numbering 
is  given  in  brackets,  A  very  suggestive  account  of  Cyprian's  work  in 
constructing  the  poUty  of  the  Church  is  given  by  Albrecht  Ritschl  in  his 
Die  Entstehung  der  altkatlioliscliai  Kirche,  2nd  ed.  (1857),  pp.  555-73, 
Otto  Ritschl,  his  son,  has  written  Cyprian,  von  Karthago  und  die  Verfius- 
siing  der  Kirche  (1885) — a  careful  and  elaborate  work.  Other  monographs 
on   Cyprian  are : — Rettberg,   Thascins  Caecilius  Cyprianus,  Bischof  von 


284         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

great  ecclesiastical  statesman,  like  Gregory  I.,  has  left  behind 
him  a  collection  of  letters  which  reveal  the  working  of  his  mind, 

Carthago,  dargesldlt  nach  scinen  Leben  und  Wirken  (1831).  Fechtrup 
(Roman  Catholic),  Der  Heilige  Cypriayi;  sein  Leben  und  seine  Lehre  (1878). 
Pearson's  Annales  Cyprianici  are  valuable  ;  they  are  published  in  Fell's 
(Oxford)  edition  of  Cyprian's  works  (1682),  and  have  been  repubUshed 
in  Pearson's  Minor  Theological  Works  (1884),  The  latest  book  on  Cyprian 
is  from  the  pen  of  Dr.  Benson,  the  late  archbishop  of  Canterbury,  who 
was  the  author  of  the  article  on  Cyprian  in  the  Dictionary  of  Christian 
Biography.  The  book  is  entitled  Cyprian,  his  Life,  his  Times,  his  Work 
(1897).  From  one  point  of  view  it  is  impossible  to  praise  this  book  too 
highly  ;  but  it  has  very  grave  defects.  It  displays  fine  scholarship,  un- 
wearied research,  and  an  historical  imagination  which  enables  the  author 
to  reconstruct  the  secular  society  of  the  times  when  Cyprian  lived.  The 
framing  is  excellent ;  but  the  portrait  framed  is  scarcely  so  good.  The 
author  exhibits  to  us  a  pious,  suave,  courteous,  far-seeing  ecclesiastical 
statesman,  whose  letters  and  speeches  were  seasoned  with  a  sarcastic 
humour  ;  but  the  real  Cyprian  had  other  characteristics  which  are  either 
hidden  out  of  sight  or  relegated  to  an  obscure  background.  We  see  nothing 
whatever  of  the  prophet  whom  the  Spirit  inspired  in  dreams  and  visions 
when  moments  of  difficulty  in  Ufe  or  in  ecclesiastical  poUcy  arose,  and 
whose  di'ead  of  demons  changed  spiritual  sacraments  into  magical  rites  ; 
little  of  the  canonist  who  measured  the  deep  promptings  of  the  heart's 
repentance  by  stereotyped  expressions,  and  paved  the  way  for  the  degrada- 
tion of  sorrow  into  the  mechanism  of  penance  ;  Uttle  of  the  fiery  Roman 
African  who  launched  envenomed  phrases  at  ecclesiastical  opponents  ; 
and  nothing  of  the  ruthless  Roman  lawyer  who  condemned  a  Christian 
martyr,  who  had  survived  the  tortures  which  had  covered  her  poor  body 
with  blood,  to  eternal  perdition  (for  this  he  thought  he  could  do  as  a  suc- 
cessor of  the  apostles),  when  she  crossed  the  path  of  his  ecclesiastical 
poHcy.  Then  a  curious  colour  blindness  or  perhaps  an  amiable  projieusity 
to  see  all  things  ecclesiastical  through  the  coloured  glass  of  the  modern 
institutions  of  the  communion  over  which  he  so  worthily  presided,  pre- 
vents the  author  from  seeing  the  ecclesiastical  situation  which  existed  in 
the  middle  of  the  third  century.  Dr.  Benson  had  evidently  great  difficulty 
in  stating  an  opjDonent's  argument  fairly,  and  seldom  succeeds  in  doing 
so.  He  had  no  acquaintance  Avith  the  organization  of  any  branch  of  the 
Protestant  Church  save  his  own,  and  yet  makes  continual  allusion  to  other 
organizations.  We  have  such  phrases  as  "  Presbyterian  Teutonisra " 
(this  is  applied  to  the  greatest  living  authority  in  early  Church  history, 
Dr.  Harnack  of  Berlin) ;  "  heavy  pages,"  "  laborious  pages  "  (phrases 
which  mean  that  an  opinion  Dr.  Benson  does  not  like  is  supported  by  a 
plentiful  supply  of  quotations  from  Cyprian's  writings),  "  Calvinism  "  (used 
at  random,  for  Calvinists  agree  with  Cyprian  and  Augustine  on  the  matter 
discussed)  ;  and  many  others  of  the  same  kind.  Tliey  are  useful  to  warn 
the  unwary  reader  of  the  bias  in  the  book. 


CYPRIAN  OF  CARTHAGE  285 

and  enable  us  to  see  how  his  thoughts  took  sharper  outhne  in  a 
controversy  which  he  had  to  maintain  with  his  own  office- 
bearers in  Carthage,  and  how  he  aimed  at  and  partly  succeeded 
in  giving  the  Christian  Church  a  polity  which  enabled  it  to  be  one 
in  practical  activity  as  it  was  one  in  devotional  conception. 

Thascius  Cyprianus  was  the  most  eminent  of  the  many  dis- 
tinguished converts  whom  Christianity  was  drawing  from  the 
learned  and  wealthy  classes  during  the  second  third  of  the 
third  century,  during  that  long  period  of  "  peace  "  which  pre- 
ceded the  outbreak  of  the  Decian  persecution  in  250  a.d.  He 
was  a  Roman  whose  ancestors  had  settled  in  Africa.  Such  men 
were  called  Roman  Africans.  They  belonged  to  a  race  which 
had  given  the  capital  some  of  its  most  distinguished  lawyers, 
and  which  furnished  to  the  Church  such  men  as  Tertulhan, 
Minucius  Felix,  Cyprian,  Lactantius  and  Augustine.  By 
training  and  profession  he  was  a  pleader,  and  therefore  of  the 
highest  social  standing.^  His  wealth  was  great ;  his  house, 
with  its  "  gilded  ceilings  "  and  "  mosaics  of  costly  marble,"  ^ 
and  his  gardens,  were  famous  in  the  city  of  palaces.  He  became 
a  Christian  in  middle  life,  drawn  by  the  persuasion  of  the  in- 

'  "  Far  from  any  shade  of  unreality  resting  on  them,  the  teachers  of 
oratory  were  courted  leaders  in  society.  The  publicity  in  life,  the  majesty 
of  national  audiences,  the  familiarity  of  the  cultivated  classes  \vith  the 
teaching  of  the  schools,  required  the  orator  to  be  not  only  perfect  in  the 
graces  of  life,  but  to  be  versed  in  ethical  science  ;  to  be  armed  with  solid 
arguments  as  well  as  to  be  facile  of  invention ;  not  less  convincing  than 
attractive  ;  in  short  to  be  a  wit  and  a  student,  a  politician  and  an  eclectic 
philosopher.  At  the  age  of  nearly  thirty  Cicero  was  still  placing  himself 
under  the  tuition  of  the  Rhodian  IVIolon.  Augustine's  fourth  book  on 
Christian  doctrine  shews  us  that  five  centuries  and  a  changed  rehgion  did 
not  abate  the  value  placed  on  technical  perfection.  No  statesman's 
name  had  for  generations  commanded  such  reverence  as  was  paid  in 
Cyprian's  times  to  the  life  and  memory  of  Timesitheus  the  Rhetorician, 
whose  daughter  the  young  African  Emperor  had  espoused,  and  whose 
honour  and  universal  cultivation  had  for  a  brief  interval  restored  purity 
to  the  Court,  dignity  to  the  senate,  and  discipUne  to  the  camps  of  Rome  "  ; 
Benson,  Cyprian,  his  Life,  his  Times,  his  Work,  pp.  2,  3. 

2  Cyprian,  Ad  Donaium,  15 : — "  Auro  distincta  aquearia  et  pretiosi 
marmoris  crustis  vestita  domicilia." 


286         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

tellect  as  well  as  by  the  pleadings  of  the  heart.  We  may  see 
the  path  he  trod  towards  conversion  in  his  Treatise  to  Donatus 
and  in  the  Booh  of  Testimonies  he  wrote  for  a  friend.  After  a 
brief  space  of  time  he  probably  became  a  deacon  ;  he  was 
certainly  an  elder  when  Donatus,  the  Bishop  of  Carthage,  died. 
The  Christians  at  Carthage  resolved  that  the  most  distinguished 
Christian  in  the  city,  although  two  years  had  scarcely  passed 
since  his  baptism,  should  be  their  bishop.  His  reluctance  only 
increased  their  ardour.  "  A  crowded  brotherhood  besieged 
the  doors  of  his  house,  and  throughout  all  the  avenues  of  access 
an  anxious  love  was  circulating."  ^  Cyprian  yielded  and  was 
ordained,  the  bishop,  the  Papa,  the  spiritual  Father  of  the 
Christian  community  in  Carthage.  We  must  forget  many  of 
the  associations  which  the  word  "  bishop  "  inevitably  brings 
with  it  to  understand  his  position.  He  was  simply  the  chief 
pastor  of  the  Christian  congregation  at  Carthage  and  of  its 
outlying  mission  districts.  He  had  no  diocese  and  never  exer- 
cised diocesan  rule.  He  had  no  cathedral,  not  even  a  church. 
His  congregation  met  in  the  audience  hall  of  a  wealthy  Car- 
thaginian burgher.*  It  was  the  man  who  made  the  position  he 
occupied  one  of  such  commanding  importance  as  it  soon  attained 
to.3 


^  Pontius,  Life  and  Passion  of  Cyprian,  Bishop  and  Martyr,  5. 

2  Benson,  Cyprian,  his  Life,  his  Times,  his  Work,  p.  41  and  note. 

3  It  may  be  useful  to  give  the  principal  dates  known  proximately  about 
Cyprian.  He  was  baptized  probably  in  the  spring  of  246  a.d.  ;  became  a 
member  of  the  Session  of  Carthage  in  247  a.d.  ;  and  was  consecrated 
bishop  some  time  after  June  in  248  a.d.  It  is  not  quite  certain  that  he 
was  a  deacon  ;  the  evidence  lies  in  the  phrase  used  by  his  biographer 
Pontius,  who  was  a  deacon  : — "  Erat  sane  illi  etiam  de  nobis  eontubernium 
viri  justi  et  laudabihs  memoriae  Caeciliani  "  {Life,  4) ;  and  in  the  sen- 
tence in  sect.  3  : — "quis  enim  non  omnes  honoris  gradus  crederet  tali  mente 
credente."  The  outbreak  of  the  Decian  persecution  being  imminent, 
Cyprian  retired  from  Carthage  to  his  unknown  hiding-place  in  January 
250  A.D.  ;  the  persecution  began  in  April  of  the  same  year.  It  raged 
fiercely  until  November,  and  was  then  relaxed  ;  but  it  was  not  considered 
safe  for  Cyprian  to  return.  He  came  back  to  Carthage  in  251  a.d.,  some 
time  after  Easter.     Then  followed  a  series  of  councils  at  Carthage  where 


THE  DECIAN  PERSECUTION  .     287 

Eighteen  months  of  quiet  rule  were  vouchsafed  him.  During 
this  period  he  had  conciliated  the  few  who  had  been  opposed 
to  the  choice  of  so  recently  baptized  a  Christian  for  the  important 
place  of  chief  pastor.  They  became,  says  Pontius,  his  biographer, 
"  his  closest  and  most  intimate  friends."  ' 

Decius  was  one  of  those  stern  upright  emperors  who  believed 
that  Christianity  was  a  source  of  menace  to  the  empire,  and 
that  it  had  to  be  stamped  out.  His  edict  against  it  was  published 
early  in  the  year  250  a.d.  It  had  been  expected  by  the  heathen 
population  of  Carthage,  and  threats  against  the  wealthy  and  well- 
known  head  of  the  Christian  community  were  freely  uttered 
by  the  mob.  Cyprian,  thinking  less  of  his  own  safety  than  of 
the  welfare  of  his  people,  believed  it  to  be  his  duty  to  go  into 
retirement,  and  a  large  part  of  his  correspondence  deajs  with  the 
management  of  his  congregation  from  his  place  of  safety.  We 
find  three  distinct  questions  of  ecclesiastical  organization  raised 
and  in  the  end  settled — the  right  of  men  supposed  to  be  specially 
possessed  by  the  Spirit  to  interfere  in  the  discipline  of  the  local 

the  African  bishops  met  under  the  presidency  of  Cyprian ; — the  first  in 
April  251  A.D.  ;  the  second  in  May  252  a.d.,  the  third  in  September  253 
A.D.,  the  fourth  in  the  autumn  of  254  a.d.,  the  fifth  in  255,  and  the  sixth 
and  seventh  in  256  ;  in  257  Cyprian  was  banished  to  Curubis  ;  he  returned 
to  Carthage  in  258  and  was  martyred  there  in  September  258. 

'  It  is  commonly  said  and  has  been  repeated  by  Dr.  Benson  that  the 
five  presbyters  who  were  at  variance  with  Cyprian  in  the  question  of  the 
influence  of  confessors  and  martyrs  on  the  discipUne  of  the  Church  were 
among  those  persons  who  disUked  his  elevation  to  the  episcopate  and  that 
they  continued  to  bear  a  grudge  against  him.  This  idea  seems  to  me  to 
have  no  basis  in  fact.  Dr.  Benson  adduces  as  his  only  proof  the  sentence : 
"  retaining  that  ancient  venom  against  my  episcopate,  that  is  against  your 
suffrage  and  God's  judgment,  they  renew  their  old  attack  upon  me " 
{Ep.  xUii.  1  [xxxix.])  ;  but  the  "ancient  venom"  and  "old  attack"  it  is 
clear  from  section  three  and  other  epistles,  was  their  first  siding  with 
the  confessors  against  Cyprian's  judgment  not  to  accept  the  certificates 
of  the  confessors  ;  while  the  word  "  suft'rage  "  means  here  as  elsewhere 
that  Cyprian  held  that  all  his  acts  as  bishop  were  to  be  justified  by  the 
fact  that  he  had  been  validly  called  to  office.  There  is  no  trace  of  any 
difficulties  between  Cyprian  and  his  presbyters  until  the  dispute  about 
what  was  due  to  the  Avishes  of  the  martyrs  and  the  confessors  in  the  matter 
of  the  lapsed. 


288         MINISTRY  CHANCIING  TO   PRIESTHOOD 

church,  the  seat  of  the  one  supreme  authority  in  the  local  church, 
and  the  best  means  of  giving  a  practical  expression  to  the  unity 
of  the  whole  Church  of  Christ.  The  occasion  which  demanded 
solution  of  all  three  questions  was  the  fact  that  many  Christians 
had  lapsed  and  w^ere  asking  to  be  restored  to  the  communion 
of  the  Church  at  Carthage.  The  ecclesiastical  questions  are 
so  connected  with  the  course  of  events  that  these  last  must  be 
briefly  noted. 

The  persecution  resolved  upon  by  the  Emperor  Decius  was 
begun  in  swift  ruthless  Roman  fashion.  It  attacked  the  Christian 
Church  everywhere  simultaneously— in  Rome,  Egypt,  Syria, 
Armenia,  Spain,  and  North  Africa.  It  aimed  at  breaking  up 
the  Christian  communities  by  destroying  their  leaders  and  then 
coercing  their  followers.  Cyprian  speaks  of  bishops  proscribed, 
imprisoned,  banished,  and  slain.'  Persecution  had  been  almost 
unknown  in  Africa  for  thirty-eight  years,  during  which  time  of 
"  peace  "  the  Christian  communities  had  been  growing  rapidly 
in  numbers  and  in  influence  ;  the  results  of  its  renewal  seemed 
at  first  sight  to  be  disastrous  to  the  Christian  faith.  Multitudes 
relapsed  into  heathenism.^  The  larger  half  of  the  Christian 
community  in  Carthage  and  at  least  one  presbyter  had  been 
unable  to  face  the  terrible  risks  in  which  the  profession  of  Chris- 
tianity had  involved  them.  They  relapsed.  They  appeared 
before  the  imperial  commissioners,  five  of  whom,  called  The 
Commissioners  of  the  Sacrifices,  were  appointed  to  act  along 
with  the  magistrates  of  the  district.  They  made  a  declaration 
that  they  worshipped  the  gods  and  in  the  presence  of  the  com- 
missioners they  took  part  in  the  pagan  worship,  either  joining 
in  a  sacrifice,  tasting  the  v/ine  and  eating  of  the  sacrificial  victim 
(the  sacrificati)  or  throwing  incense  on  the  altar  of  the  emperor 
(the  thurificati).  This  done  they  received  a  certificate  (libdlus), 
certifying  that  they  had  done  so.  This  was  registered,  and  then 
a  copy  was  posted  up  in  the  market  place  or  forum.  Some 
found  a  way  of  appearing  to  comply  and  yet  of  escaping  from 
^  Cyprian,  Epist.  Ixvi.  7  (Ixviii.).  ^  Cyprian,  De  Lapsis,  8. 


THE   LAPSED  289 

actual  participation  in  the  pagan  rites.  They  bribed  ofi&cials 
to  give  them  certificates  declaring  that  they  had  taken  part  in 
sacrifices  which  they  had  not  done  (the  lihdlatici).^  Thus  poor 
Etecusa,^  a  Roman  Christian,  while  she  sadly  and  fearfully  was 
chmbing  the  ascent  to  the  Capitol,  where  she  had  to  make  her 
declaration  and  take  part  in  the  sacrifices,  found  an  official 
near  the  small  temple  to  the  Three  Fates,  who  sold  her  a  certificate 
and  she  went  home  again  without  sacrificing.  Many  sought 
safety  in  flight,  hoping  to  find  freedom  from  persecutions  in 
cities  where  they  were  unknown. 

^  Two  of  these  libdli  were  actually  discovered  in  1893  and  1894,  brought 
from  Egypt  among  bundles  of  papyri  dug  out  of  Egyptian  sands.  They 
show  us  how  thorough  this  persecution  of  Decius  was,  how  systematically 
arranged,  how  minute  in  its  searching  out  Christians — little  villages  being 
included  and  the  women  peasants  as  well  as  the  men  interrogated.  The 
first  runs  : — "To  the  Commissioners  of  sacrifices  of  the  village  of  Alex- 
ander's Island  from  Aurelius  Diogenes  (son  of)  Satabus.  About  72. 
Scar  on  right  eyebrow.  I  was  both  constant  in  ever  sacrificing  to  the 
gods  and  now  in  your  presence  according  to  the  commands  I  sacrificed  and 
drank  and  tasted  of  the  victims,  and  I  beseech  you  to  attach  your  signature. 
May  you  ever  prosper.  I  AureUus  Diogenes  have  presented  this."  (Then 
follow  the  signatures  of  the  magistrate  and  witness.  "  I  AureUus  .  .  • 
saw  him  sacrificing.  I  Mys(thes,  son  of)  .  .  .  non  have  signed.  (First) 
year  of  the  Emperor  Caesar  Gaius  Messius  Quintus  Trajanus  Decius,  Pius 
Felix  Augustus.  2nd  day  of  Ephiphi."  The  second,  in  every  way  similar, 
bears  the  name  of  AureHus  Syrus,  his  brother  Pasbeius,  and  Demetria 
and  Serapias  their  wives.  They  were  unable  to  write  and  the  scribe 
Isidorus  appended  his  name.  The  signatures  of  the  magistrates  have  been 
torn  off. 

2  Etecusa  belonged  to  a  Carthaginian  family  which  had  suffered  much. 
Her  grandmother  Celcrina  had  been  martyred  in  an  earlier  persecution  ; 
so  had  her  uncles,  the  son  and  son-in-law  of  Celerina,  both  in  the  army. 
Her  brother  Celerinus  was  a  noted  confessor,  who  had  come  forth  alive 
out  of  the  severest  tortures  without  denjnng  his  faith.  Her  sister  Candida 
had  faltered  and  had  sacrificed.  We  see  the  confessor,  the  sacrificota  and 
the  libellatica,  in  one  family.  The  two  sisters  were  overwhelmed  with 
remorse  and  endeavoured  to  make  atonement  for  their  fall  by  waiting 
on  the  arrivals  of  travellei-s  at  Rome  and  at  Portus,  and  when  they  found 
any  Christian  refugees  from  Carthage  they  took  them  home,  hid  them, 
and  tended  them.  They  had  no  less  than  sixty-five  of  these  refugees 
in  their  house  at  Rome.  Compare  Cyprian,  Efistles,  xxi.  (xx.),  and  xxxi. 
3  (xxxiii.). 

CM.  19 


290         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO   PRIESTHOOD 

Those  Christians  who  were  of  sterner  stuff  were  imprisoned, 
awaiting  torture  and  probably  death.     The  torture  was  repeated 
over  and  over  again.     Even  if  it  produced  recantation  a  second 
torture  was  applied.     If  the  confessor  stood  firm  it  might  be 
applied  time  after  time  until  the   sufferer  expired  under  it. 
Such  men  and  women  were  called  confessors  before  they  had 
suffered,  and  martyrs  after  they  had  been  done  to  death,  or 
had  suffered  tortures  without  expiring.     The  martyrs  and  con- 
fessors were  carefully  tended  while  they  were  in  prison  by  their 
fellow-Christians ;  and  many  of  the  lapsed,  repenting  of  their 
weakness,  thronged  the  prisons  in  Carthage  and  lavished  all 
manner  of  attentions  on  the  heroic  confessors.     These  lapsed 
Christians,  especially  those  of  them  who  had  purchased  exemp- 
tion from  suffering  by  means  of  false  certificates,  were  anxious 
to  be  reconciled  with  the  Church,  and  besought  the  good  offices 
of  the  confessors  and  martyrs  to  intercede  on  their  behalf  with 
the  office-bearers,  and  beg  them  to  restore  them  again  to  com- 
munion.    The  result  was  that  many  of  the  confessors,  from  the 
prison  where  they  lay,  gave  letters  (which  were  also  called 
lihelli)  to  the  elders  of  the  Church,  the  bishop  being  absent  in 
hiding,  asking  that  the  bearers  might  be  restored  to  the  Church 
which  they  had  abandoned  in  a  moment  of  weakness.     This 
Decian  persecution  differed   from  all   preceding   ones  to  this 
extent,  that  it  had  fallen  on  the  whole  Church  of  Christ,  and 
was  not  confined  to  any  one  portion.     The  question  of  what  was 
to  be  done  in  the  case  of  lapsed  members  who  wished  to  return 
to  the  faith  they  had  abjured  was  one  which  was  forced  upon 
the  whole  Church  everywhere  and  at  the  same  time.'     It  was 
a  question  of  discipline  which  had  to  be  inevitably  faced  by 
every  church. 

So  far  as  our  information  goes,  the  leaders  of  the  Roman 

Church  were  the  first  to  see  the  importance  and  the  urgency 

of  the  question.     The  Bishop  Fabian  had  been  one  of  the  first 

martyrs  ;  to  meet  and  appoint  a  successor  would  have  been  to 

Cyprian,  Epistle,  xix.  2  (xiii.). 


THE   LAPSED  291 

offer  new  victims  to  the  persecuting  government.  The  elders 
of  the  church  took  the  burden  of  leadership  on  their  own  shoul- 
ders ;  they  saw  the  universal  situation  and  the  need  for  an 
immediate  understanding  with  sister  churches  about  what  it  was 
possible  to  do  at  once.  They  put  aside  matters  that  could  wait 
until  their  church  had  again  its  lawful  head  ;  but  the  one  matter 
which  pressed  for  an  immediate  decision  was  what  ought  to 
be  done  in  the  case  of  lapsed  Christians  who  earnestly  desired 
reconciliation  with  the  Church,  and  who  were  on  the  foint  of 
death.  They  accordingly  wrote  to  the  elders  in  Carthage, 
advising  them  to  follow  a  definite  rule  with  regard  to  the  lapsed 
who  were  repentant — that  if  any  were  taken  with  sickness,  and 
repented  of  what  they  had  done  and  desired  communion,  it  should 
be  granted  to  them.  In  the  same  letter  these  Roman  elders 
speak  not  obscurely  of  Cyprian  as  the  hireling  shepherd  who 
deserts  his  sheep  when  peril  draws  near.  They  in  Rome  and 
the  elders  in  Carthage  are  both  deprived  of  their  chief ;  perse- 
cution makes  all  work  difficult,  but  it  must  be  done.  This 
letter  reached  Cyprian,  who  treated  it  in  a  very  lofty  way, 
and  sent  it  back  to  the  writers  with  a  few  grimly  sarcastic  re- 
marks ;  but  it  had  a  marked  effect  on  him  nevertheless.'  It 
altered  his  attitude  towards  his  own  elders.  Before  he  had  read 
it  he  had  sent  a  letter  to  his  elders  and  deacons,  in  which  he  had 
said  :  "  I  beg  you  by  your  faith  and  your  religion  to  discharge 

^  Hamack  and  Ritschl  think  that  Crumentius  carried  this  letter  to  the 
office-bearers  in  Carthage  for  whom  it  was  certainly  intended,  and  that 
they  manifested  their  loyalty  to  Cyprian  by  making  Ciumentius  take  it 
on  to  their  bishop.  Baison  asserts  that  the  elders  in  Carthage  never  saw 
the  letter  ;  that  it  was  put  into  Cyprian's  hands  and  that  he  sent  it  back 
to  Rome  \vithout  permitting  it  to  reach  its  destination.  Benson  may  be 
right.  Cyprian  suppressed  a  more  important  letter  on  a  more  important 
occasion  and  he  might  have  suppressed  this  one  also.  The  archbishop 
justifies  the  one  suppression  by  calling  Cyprian  a  "  benevolent  despot "  ; 
and  the  other  by  praising  his  sense  of  humour  !  Otto  Ritschl,  Cyprian 
von  Karthago  (1885),  p.  9  ;  Benson,  Cyprian,  his  Life,  his  Times,  his  Work 
(1897),  p.  149.  It  does  not  matter  which  view  is  the  correct  one ;  the 
important  thing  is  the  effect  of  the  letter  on  the  mind  of  Cyprian,  not  its 
effect  on  the  elders  of  Carthage. 


292         MINISTRY  CHANCIING  TO   PRIESTHOOD 

both  your  own  office  and  mine,  that  there  be  nothing  wanting 
either  to  discipline  or  diligence."  ^  He  left  the  whole  work 
unreservedly  in  their  hands — all  his  work  as  well  as  theirs. 
The  two  words  used,  disciplina  and  diligentia,  are  employed 
by  Cyprian  to  denote  the  two  great  divisions  of  a  bishop's  work 
— the  term  disciplina  including  everything  which  belonged 
to  the  office  of  judging  and  punishing,  and  diligentia  including 
all  that  belonged  to  his  work  as  the  head  of  the  religious  ad- 
ministration of  the  congregation,  the  care  of  the  poor  and  such 
matters.  In  a  letter  following,  however,  he  distinctly  limited 
the  work  of  his  elders  and  deacons  to  the  diligentia  or  to  the 
religious  administration.^  "  I  exhort  and  command  you,  that 
those  of  you  whose  presence  there  is  least  suspicious  and  least 
perilous,  should  in  my  stead  discharge  my  duty  in  respect  of 
doing  those  things  which  are  required  for  the  religious  adminis- 
tration." ^  In  the  same  letter  he  refuses  to  answer  a  question 
sent  him  by  four  presbyters,  and  which  evidently  concerned 
matters  of  discipline  on  the  ground  that  in  such  matters  he  did 
nothing  on  his  own  private  opinion  without  the  advice  of  his 
elders,  deacons,  and  people.**  From  this  time  onwards  Cyprian 
shows  himself  more  and  more  irritated  with  his  elders.  He 
wrote  to  the  martyrs  and  the  confessors  complaining  that  some 
of  his  elders  had  admitted  some  of  the  lapsed  to  communion ;  ^ 
he  wrote  to  his  elders  and  deacons  complaining  that  some  of  the 
elders,  "  remembering  neither  the  Gospel  nor  their  own  place,  and, 
moreover,  considering  neither  the  Lord's  future  judgment  nor 
the  bishop  now  placed  over  them,  claim  to  themselves  entire 


^  Cyprian,  Epist.  v.  1  (iv.)  ;   compare  Epist.  xx.  1  (xiv.). 

2  Dr.  Benson  rather  vehemently  declares  that  there  is  no  change  of 
attitude  in  Cyprian's  two  letters.  He  gives  an  abstract  of  Ritschl's 
arguments  and  says  that  his  "  abstract  mil  be  as  just  as  he  can  make 
it";  and  yet  he  omits  entirely  the  strongest  argument  Ritschl  has 
adduced !  Compare  Benson,  Cyprian,  etc.  pp.  148-50 ;  Otto  Ritschl, 
Cyprian  von  Karthago,  pp.  9-13,  216,  217. 

3  Cyprian's  Epist.  xiv.  2  (v.). 

4  Epist.  xiv.  4  (v.).  5  Epist.  xv.  1  (x.). 


THE   LAPSED  293 

authority  (a  thing  which  was  never  done  in  anywise  under 
our  predecessors)  with  discredit  and  contempt  of  the  bishop." 
Their  fault  was  that  the  elders  blamed  had  communicated  with 
some  of  the  lapsed,  and  offered  and  given  them  the  eucharist, 
"  disregarding  the  honour  which  the  blessed  martyrs,  with  the 
confessors,  maintain  for  me,  despising  the  law  of  the  Lord,  and 
that  observance  which  the  same  martyrs  and  confessors  order 
to  be  maintained."  '  He  wrote  to  the  people  complaining  of 
the  action  of  the  elders  in  almost  the  same  terms,  and  promised 
that  when  he  could  return  a  meeting  of  bishops  would  be  con- 
vened and  that  in  the  presence  of  the  confessors,  and  with  their 
opinion,  the  letters  and  wishes  of  the  "  blessed  martyrs  "  with 
reference  to  the  lapsed  would  be  carefully  considered.^ 

We  do  not  know  whether  Cyprian  got  any  answer  to  these 
letters  ;  but  the  probabiHty  is  that  he  received  none,  and  that 
people  and  clergy  felt  sore  that  the  bishop  would  neither  return 
and  act  himself  nor  allow  his  elders  to  do  anything  in  the  pressing 
question  of  the  lapsed.  He  wrote  again  to  the  elders  and  deacons 
and  for  the  first  time  suggested  some  immediate  action.  If  any 
of  the  lapsed  had  a  certificate  from  one  of  the  martyrs  and 
were  in  sore  sickness  they  were  to  be  allowed  to  communicate. ^ 
This  letter  brought  an  answer,  which  assured  him  that  the 
elders  and  deacons  had  hitherto  done  their  best  to  follow  his 
instructions,  and  to  restrain  the  people  and  especially  the  lapsed  ; 
and  Cyprian  reiterates  the  command  that  if  any  of  the  penitent 
lapsed  had  a  certificate  from  one  of  the  martyrs,  and  were  at 
the  point  of  death,  they  were  to  be  received  back  into  the 
communion  of  the  Church.'* 

Then  comes  a  curious  letter.^  Cyprian,  whose  last  deaUngs 
with  Rome  had  been  to  send  back  the  letter  of  advice  which 
the  Roman  elders  had  addressed  to  their  brethren  at  Carthage, 
now  wrote  to  these  Roman  elders  ;  justified  to  them  his  actions 
in  Carthage;  complained   bitterly   of  the  way  in  which  the 

»  Epist.  xvi.  1,  3  (ix.).  ^  Epist.  xvii.  2,  3  (xi.). 

3  Epist.  xviii.  (xii.).      *  Epist.  xix.  1,  2  (xiii.).     5  Epist.  xx.  (xiv.). 


294         MINISTRY  CHANGING   TO  PRIESTHOOD 

lihdlatici  liad  pestered  the  martyrs  for  certificates ;  bemoaned 
the  weakness  of  some  of  his  clergy  in  admitting  some  of  the 
lapsed  to  communion ;  and  declared  that  he  had  followed  the 
advice  given  in  the  letter  from  Rome  which  he  had  treated  so 
scornfully  when  it  reached  him.  His  letter,  however,  contains 
one  interesting  fact.  Cyprian  says  distinctly  that  although 
some  of  his  presbyters  had  acted  rashly  in  communicating 
with  the  lapsed,  they  had  refrained  as  soon  as  he  had  remon- 
strated with  them.^  Rome,  however,  had  not  forgotten  his 
earlier  action,  and  he  had  to  write  four  times  ere  he  got  an 
answer.  When  it  came  it  was  practically  a  repetition  of  what 
had  been  written  to  the  elders  of  Carthage,  at  least  so  far  as 
immediate  action  was  concerned  :  If  the  lapsed  are  in  severe 
sickness  and  are  penitent,  admit  them  to  communion,  whether 
they  Jiave  certificates  from  martyrs  or  not.  But  as  regards 
the  larger,  statesmanlike  policy,  which  belonged  to  the  immediate 
future,  the  Roman  elders  adopted  the  proposals  laid  before 
them  by  Cyprian,  and  by  intercourse  and  correspondence  they 
obtained  the  adhesion  of  many  bishops  in  Sicily  and  in  some 
parts  of  Italy.^  Cyprian  himself  had  meanwhile  gained  the 
adoption  of  his  policy  by  a  large  number  of  bishops  in  Africa, 
with  whom  he  had  been  in  correspondence.^ 

Having  thus  secured  the  support  of  the  Roman  elders  and 
of  so  many  bishops  throughout  the  West  for  his  conception 
of  arriving  at  a  common  mode  of  dealing  with  the  lapsed,  Cyprian 
at  once  took  measures  to  subdue  all  resistance  in  Carthage. 
He  superseded  his  elders  by  a  commission  of  five,  three  bishops 
and  two  elders,  to  whom  he  entrusted  not  merely  the  discipline, 
but  also  the  relief  of  the  deserving  poor.  They  were  to  be  his 
vicars.  It  was  this  action  that  produced  the  subsequent  schism 
in  the  Church  at  Carthage,'^  a  result  scarcely  to  be  wondered  at. 
Why  such  an  arbitrary  step  should  have  been  taken  it  is  difficult 


XX.  2  (xiv.).         ^  Epist.  xxx.  5,  8  (xxx.) ;    xliii.  3  (xxxix.). 

3  Epist.  XXV.  (xix.)  ;    xxvi.  (xvii.). 

4  Epist.  xl.  1  (xxxvii.) ;   xlii.  (xxxviii.). 


THE  AUTHORITY   OF   MARTYRS  295 

to  say.  Cyprian  himself  testifies  that  his  clergy  were  at  one  with 
him ;  they  had  with  his  approval  excommunicated  Gaius  of 
Didda,  a  presbyter  who  had  insisted  on  commmiicating  with  the 
lapsed.  However  it  is  to  be  accomited  for  it  remains  a  witness 
to  what  Cyprian  believed  to  be  the  power  of  the  chief  pastor  ; 
and  it  also  seems  to  imply  that  at  tliis  juncture  Cyprian  stood 
very  much  alone,  separated  in  sympathy  both  from  his  clergy 
and  his  people. 

Such  was  the  situation  in  Carthage  immediately  before 
Cyprian  was  able  to  return,  and  to  hold  the  successive  councils 
of  African  bishops  which  exhibited  his  ecclesiastical  statesman- 
ship. Through  the  whole  course  of  these  events  one  question 
thrusts  itself  into  prominence — the  possibility  of  the  restoration 
to  Church  communion  of  Christians  who  had  lapsed  during 
the  persecution,  and  who  penitently  begged  to  be  allowed  to 
return.  Cyprian  had  one  opinion  on  this  matter  and  some  of  his 
elders  had  another. 

If  the  earlier  usages  of  the  Church  be  kept  in  mind,  there 
was  much  to  be  said  on  both  sides.  Idolatry  had  always  been 
considered  one  of  the  worst  sins  into  which  the  baptized  Christian 
could  fall.  It  was  one  ol  those  heinous  sins  against  God  which, 
it  was  believed,  the  Church  could  never  pardon.  No  limits 
were  set  to  the  mercy  of  God  ;  He  might  pardon  and  in  the  end 
receive ;  but  the  Church  could  only  accept  such  repentant 
sinners  as  catechumens,  who  could  never  again  approach  the 
Lord's  Table.  On  the  other  hand,  it  had  been  held  that  such 
sins  could  be  pardoned  in  the  Church  if  a  revelation  was  received 
from  God  authorizing  the  restoration  in.  any  particular  case. 
So  long  as  the  prophetic  ministry  lasted,  it  was  believed  that  a 
prophet  might  receive  such  a  revelation.'  The  opinion  which 
silently  spread  through  the  Church  that  deadly  sins  might 
receive  forgiveness  once  but  not  on  a  second  lapse,  can  be  traced 
back  to  a  prophetic  utterance.^  It  was  also  believed  that,  besides 
the  prophets,  the  martyrs  were  the  very  men  to  whom  it  was 
'  Tertullian,  De  Pudicitia,  21.         *  Hermas,  Pastor,  Mandata,  iv. 


296         MINISTRY   CHANGING   TO  PRIESTHOOD 

likely  that  God  would  vouchsafe  such  a  revelation  of  His  mind 
and  will.^  They  too  had  the  right  to  speak  the  word  of  pardon 
which  the  office-bearers  of  the  Church  dared  not  do.  To  speak 
such  pardons,  then,  was  the  prerogative  of  prophets  and  martyrs ;' 
and  it  was  theirs  because  the  Spirit  of  God  dwelt  in  them  in 
larger  measure  than  in  any  other  Christians,  whether  office- 
bearers or  not.  Martyrs  had  used  this  prerogative  of  theirs 
in  the  past.  The  martyrs  of  Lyons  had  pronounced  the  pardon 
of  the  penitent  lapsed  around  them ;  ^  and  we  can  see  from 
Tertullian,'*  how  common  a  practice  it  was  for  men  who,  by  reason 
of  some  great  sin,  were  "  outside  the  peace  of  the  Church," 
to  supplicate  the  martyrs  to  procure  this  peace  for  them.  Hence 
the  elders  of  Carthagq  might  well  plead  that  they  were  acting 
according  to  the  ancient  traditions  of  the  Church  when  they 
were  induced  to  give  communion  to  those  who  came  with  the 
letters  of  the  martyrs  in  their  hands. 

On  the  other  hand,  Cyprian  felt  that  the  Decian  persecution 
was  a  crisis  which  might  make  or  mar  the  Church  of  God.  The 
long  rest  from  persecution  had  made  conversion  a  comparatively 
easy  thing,  and  the  persecution,  with  the  wholesale  defections 

'  The  Holy  Spirit  had  entered  the  prison  along  with  them,  Tertulhan 
declared  (Ad  Martyras,  1).  It  was  the  constant  belief  that  the  Lord  had 
taken  vip  His  abode  in  His  martyr,  speaking  in  him  and  suffering  with  him ; 
compare  the  collection  of  evidence  in  Sohm,  Kirchenrecht,  i.  32  n.  9. 

2  Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecdes.  V.  xviii.  7. 

3  Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecdes.  V.  ii.  5,  6 : — "  They  loosed  all,  they  bound 
none.  .  .  .  They  did  not  arrogate  any  sujDeriority  over  the  lapsed  ;  but 
in  those  things  wherein  they  themselves  abounded,  in  this  they  supplied 
those  that  were  deficient,  exercising  the  compassion  of  mothers,  and  jiour- 
ing  forth  prayers  to  the  Father  on  their  account."  Cf.  Eusebius,  Hist. 
Ecdes.  xHi.  5. 

4  Tertulhan,  Ad  Martyras,  1  : — "  You  know  that  some  not  able  to  find 
this  peace  in  the  Church,  have  been  used  to  seek  it  from  the  imprisoned 
martyrs."  In  his  tract  De  Pudicitia  he  denounces  the  practice  in  the 
case  of  those  who  had  been  guilty  of  sins  of  the  flesh  (22).  The  martyr, 
he  says,  is  no  sooner  in  prison  than  sinners  beset  and  gain  access  to  him  ; 
"  instantly  prayers  echo  round  him  ;  instantly  pools  of  tears  of  all  the 
polluted  surround  him  ;  nor  are  any  more  diUgent  in  purchasing  entrance 
into  prison  than  those  who  have  lost  the  Church." 


THE   AUTHORITY  OF   MARTYRS  297 

it  had  produced,  had  shown  how  bad  these  easy  conversions 
had  been  for  the  stability  of  the  Church.  To  make  restoration 
an  easy  matter  might  do  more  harm  to  Christianity  than  the 
persecution  itself.  He  was  unwearied  in  urging,  in  his  earliest 
letters,  that  lapsing  into  idolatry  was  a  heinous  sin  against  God, 
which  must  be  bitterly  repented  in  protracted  sorrow.  Hasty 
restoration  was  a  profanity  in  his  sight,  and  the  demand  for  it 
did  not  seem  to  him  to  be  a  sign  of  the  depth  of  sorrow  that 
should  exist.  He  knew  that  the  churches  had  relaxed  their 
former  rigid  attitude  with  regard  to  sins  specially  heinous  ;  he 
had  no  word  of  disapproval  for  the  practice  ;  he  believed  that 
the  churches  had  authority  to  forgive  even  the  sin  of  idolatry — 
at  least  he  must  have  come  to  believe  that  they  had  ;  ^  but  with 
that  strong  view  of  authority  which  was  his  characteristic  and 
with  his  ideas  of  orderly  Church  procedure,  he  was  determined 
that  the  whole  question  of  the  lapsed  ought  to  be  gone  into 
with  the  greatest  deliberation.  The  dominant  idea  in  his 
earliest  epistles  is  that  after  the  persecution  had  ceased  the 
bishop,  elders,  deacons,  confessors  and  people  ought  to  meet 
together,  and  the  question  of  the  lapsed,  their  repentance 
and  their  pardon  deliberately  dealt  with."  The  scene  sug- 
gested by  his  words  is  what  we  know  was  the  mode  of  dis- 
cipline in  the  Roman  Church  after  Calixtus'  proclamation  that 
the  office-bearers  at  Rome  were  prepared  to  grant  pardon  for 
sins  of  the  flesh  on  due  signs  of  sorrow.  Tertullian's  description 
of  the  scene,  although  a  caricature  by  a  bitter  opponent,  conveys 
a  not  imfair  impression  of  what  must  have  frequently  taken 
place. ^     Cyprian's  later  declaration  that  he  meant  to  ask  the 

'  In  his  Testimonies  (iii.  28),  Cyprian  says  distinctly  that  "  remission 
cannot  be  granted  in  the  Church  to  him  who  has  sinned  against  God  "  ; 
but  he  does  not  say  whether  this  "  sin  against  God  "  is  idolatry  or  not. 

2  Epistles,  xi.  8  (vii.) ;   xiv.  4  (v.) ;   xv.  1  (x.) ;   xvi.  4  (ix.). 

3  De  Pudicitia,  13  : — "  You  introduce  into  the  Cliurch  the  penitent 
adulterer  for  the  purpose  of  melting  the  brotherhood  by  his  supplications. 
You  lead  him  into  the  midst  clad  in  sackcloth,  covered  with  ashes,  a  com- 
pound of  disgrace  and  horror.     He  prostrates  himself  before  the  widows, 


298         MINISTRY  CHANGING   TO   PRIESTHOOD 

assistance  of  other  bishops  in  the  determination  of  so  grave  a 
matter  is  not  incompatible  with  his  earher  promises.^ 

Suddenly  he  was  brought  face  to  face  with  a  question  of 
authority.  To  the  grave  Roman  lawyer  who  had  become  a 
Christian  bishop,  the  question  of  authority  was  the  question  of 
questions.  Another  authority  suddenly  confronted  him  v/ithin 
his  own  congregation.  He  could  afford  to  be  sarcastic  in  a 
dignified  manner  when  the  elders  of  the  Church  of  Rome  com- 
pared him  to  a  hireling  shepherd  and  then  proceeded  to  give 
advice  to  his  own  office-bearers.  That  was  from  without ; 
but  this  was  from  within ;  and  had  moreover  some  sanction 
from  ancient  usage.  He  felt  bound  to  resist,  and  he  did  with 
all  his  powers. 

Thus  this  struggle  successfully  maintained  by  Cyprian  against 
the  right  of  the  martyrs  or  confessors  to  pronounce  pardon  of 
one  who  had  lapsed,  may  be  looked  upon  as  the  last  stage  of 
the  long  contest  waged  by  the  office-bearers  of  the  local  churches 
against  the  ancient  supremacy  of  the  prophetic  ministry.  His 
success  established  the  complete  supremacy  of  the  local  office- 
bearers ;  it  was  never  again  questioned.  Carthage  had  there- 
fore a  pecuUar  place  in  the  development  of  the  idea  of  the  centre 
of  authority  in  the  Church  of  Christ  in  addition  to  the  prominence 
given  to  it  by  the  genius  of  its  bishop.  The  martyrs  and  con- 
fessors do  not  seem  to  have  contested  the  supremacy  of  the 
bishop  or  office-bearers  anywhere  else.  At  Rome,^  at  Alexandria 
and  at  Corinth,  they  all  supported  the  ordinary  ecclesiastical 

before  the  elders,  suing  for  the  tears  of  all ;  he  seizes  the  edges  of  their 
garments,  he  clasps  their  knees,  he  kisses  the  i^rints  of  their  feet.  Mean- 
while you  harangue  the  people  and  excite  their  pity  for  the  sad  lot  of  the 
penitent.  Good  pastor,  blessed  father  that  you  are,  you  describe  the 
coming  back  of  your  goat  in  recounting  the  parable  of  the  lost  sheep. 
And  in  case  your  ewe  lamb  may  take  another  leap  out  of  the  fold — as  if 
that  were  not  lawful  for  the  future  which  was  not  really  lawful  in  the  past 
— you  fill  all  the  rest  of  the  flock  with  apprehension  at  the  very  moment 
of  granting  indulgence." 

^  Epistle,  xvii.  3  (xi.).  ' 

2  Cyprian,  Epistle,  xxxi.  6,  7  (xxv.). 


THE  AUTHORITY  OF   BISHOPS  299 

authorities.^  In  Carthage  alone  the  confessors  and  martyrs 
strove  to  exert  their  power  against  that  of  the  bishop,  and  found 
some  of  the  office-bearers  ready,  at  first  at  least,  to  accept  their 
decisions  as  the  commands  of  God. 

Felicissimus  could  say  :  "  God  speaks  tlirough  His  martyrs 
as  He  spoke  in  the  old  days  through  His  prophets,  and  where 
God  speaks  there  is  His  Church  "  ;  and  the  lapsed  could  send 
letters  to  Cyprian  written  in  the  name  of  the  Church,  because 
they  were  written  by  martyrs ;  while  Cyprian  could  reply : 
"  God  speaks  through  the  bishop  as  he  formerly  spoke  through 
His  apostles,  and  the  Church  is  founded  on  the  bishops,  and 
every  act  of  the  Church  is  controlled  by  these  same  rulers."  ^ 
Thus  the  two  authorities  faced  each  other  in  Carthage — at  first 
within  the  one  community — then,  when  the  tension  became 
too  strong,  in  two  separate  congregations,  in  one  of  which 
Felicissimus  and  the  five  elders  represented  the  old  idea  of 
authoritative  divine  utterance  in  the  midst  of  the  congrega- 
tion ;  while  in  the  other  Cyprian  insisted  on  the  new  thought, 
first  proclaimed  by  Hippolytus  and  Calixtus  in  their  mutual 
quarrels,  that  the  bishops  speak  the  divine  decisions  as  the 
apostles  had  done.^     »- 

Cyprian  took  this  position  from  the  first : — No  one  can  be 

'  Compare  the  account  given  by  Eusebius  of  the  way  m  which  Diouysius 
of  Corinth  persuaded  his  people  to  admit  the  lapsed  there  to  communion 
{Hist.  Ecclcs.  VI.  xUi.  5,  6) ;  — "But  these  same  martyrs,  who  are  now 
sitting  with  Christ  and  are  the  sharers  of  His  kingdom,  and  the  partners 
in  His  judgment,  and  who  are  now  judging  with  Him,  received  those  of 
the  brethren  that  fell  away  and  had  been  convicted  of  sacrificing,  and 
when  they  saw  their  conversion  and  repentance,  and  having  proved  them 
as  sincei'e,  they  received  them  and  assembled  with  them.  They  also  com- 
municated with  them  in  prayer  and  at  their  feasts.  ^Vliat  then,  brethren, 
do  ye  advise  concerning  these  ?  ^Vliat  should  we  do  ?  Let  us  join  in  our 
sentiments  with  them,  and  let  us  observe  their  judgment  and  their  charity  ; 
and  let  us  kindly  receive  those  who  were  treated  with  such  compassion 
by  them.  Or  should  we  rather  pronounce  their  judgment  unjust,  and  set 
ourselves  up  as  judges  of  their  opinions,  and  thus  grieve  the  spirit  of  mild- 
ness, and  overturn  established  order  ?  " 

^  Compare  the  whole  of  Epistle  xxxiii.  (xxvi.). 

3  Otto  Ritschl  seems  to  think  that  Cyprian,  if  he  did  not  during  the  course 


300         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

.  received  back  into  the  communion  of  the  Church  until  penance 
has  been  performed,  confession  made,  and  the  hands  of  the 
bishop  and  clergy  are  laid  upon  their  heads.  This  cannot  be 
done  in  the  absence  of  the  bishop,  and  therefore  there  can  be 
no  restitution  of  the  lapsed  until  the  "  peace  "  comes  and  the 
bishop  is  able  to  return.  But  he  was  too  great  a  man  to  be  a 
doctrinaire  theorist.  When  he  found  the  strength  of  the  martyrs' 
position  in  Carthage,  when  his  humanity  was  touched  with  the 
thought  of  really  penitent  lapsed  dying  without  the  reconciliation 
they  longed  for,  he  permitted  his  elders  to  communicate  with 
those  invalids  who  had  martyrs'  certificates,  although  he  could 
not  be  present  himself  to  receive  them  formally,'  and  by  nomina- 

of  the  Decian  persecution  alter  his  conception  of  what  the  Church  was, 
held  it  in  a  more  rudimentary  form  before  the  persecution  arose,  and  that 
it  took  shape  during  his  experiences  while  the  i^ersecution  lasted.  He  is 
therefore  of  opinion  that  he  sees  these  more  rudimentary  ideas  in  the  letter 
Ixiii.  (Ixii.),  which  he  accordingly  places  at  the  head  of  the  list.  The 
argument  from  the  expressions  in  the  letter  does  not  appear  to  be  very 
conclusive.  Cyprian  is  there  speaking  of  the  cup  in  the  Holy  Supper. 
He  says  that  the  water  in  the  mixed  chaUce  represents  the  baptized  people 
and  the  wine  is  the  symbol  of  Christ ;  and  that  when  the  cup  is  given  the 
Church  becomes  united  with  Christ.  He  calls  the  Church  which  is  thus 
united  to  Christ  in  communicating  "  the  people  established  in  the  Church 
faithfully  and  firmly  persevering  in  what  they  have  believed."  He  is  not 
speaking  about  what  makes  a  Church,  but  about  how  the  jDcople  who  are  in 
the  Church  are  united  to  Christ  in  partaking  of  the  cup  in  the  communion. 
It  is  true  that  Cyprian  tells  us  that  the  Church  is  in  episcopo  ct  clew  et  in 
omnibus  stantibus  constituta ;  but  this  definition  does  not  prevent  him 
asserting  in  the  previous  sentence  that  the  Church  is  founded  on  the 
bishops  (Epist.  xxxiii.  1  (xxvi.).  Cyprian  held  from  the  beginning  that 
the  bishop  is  the  keystone  of  the  arch ;  without  him  nothing  remains  but  a 
heap  of  ruins.  At  the  same  time,  his  theory  grew  more  and  more  distinct 
as  he  had  to  accept  consequences  which  followed  from  his  premises  in  the 
discussions  which  the  controversies  about  the  lapsed  evoked.  Compare 
Ritschl,  Cyprian,  etc.  pp.  86  f.  and  241  ;  Benson,  Cyprian,  pp.  39,  186  f. 

'  Epistle,  xviii.  (xii.);  xx.  3  (xiv.) ;  Ivii.  1  (liii.).  Cyprian,  Uke  his 
master,  TertuUian,  evidently  thought  that  it  ought  to  "  suffice  to  the 
martyr  to  have  purged  his  OAvn  sins  ;  it  is  part  of  ingratitude  or  of  pride 
to  lavish  upon  others  what  one  has  obtained  at  a  high  price.  Who  has 
redeemed  another's  death  by  his  own,  but  the  Son  of  God  alone  ?  "  He 
also  knew  that  beneath  the  noble  constancy  which  endured  tortures  there 
was  a  nervous  excitement  on  the  part  of  some  at  least  which  was  leading 


THE  AUTHORITY  OF  BISHOPS  301 

ting  a  distinguished  martyr  to  be  one  of  his  commission  of  five, 
he  managed  to  show  the  people  that  the  whole  strength  of  the 
martyrs  was  not  on  the  side  opposed  to  him.'     Never  from 
beginning  to  end  did  he  acknowledge  an  authority  in  the  local 
church  superior  or  even  equal  to  that  of  the  bishop.     He  went 
the  length  of  superseding  his  elders,  the  ancient  counsellors  of 
the  bishop,  when  he  thought  that  the  influence  of  the  martyrs 
over  them  was  likely  to  weaken  his.     He  was  the  despot,  gener- 
ally a  benevolent  despot,  of  the  local  church.     His  position  might 
be  due  to  his  people,  but  he  never  imagined  that  his  authority 
came  from  them  ;  it  came  from  God  directly.     That  was  his  idea 
from  first  to  last.  The  old  theory  that  the  bishop  did  not  differ 
from  the  elders  save  in  having  a  special  seat  of  honour  in  the 
Church  and  in  having  the  power  to  ordain,  was  not  his.     He  was  a 
Roman  lawyer,  and  the  analogies  of  imperial  government  were 
always  before  him.  The  governors  of  the  imperial  provinces,  large 
or  small,  were  nominated  by  the  emperor  and  were  responsible 
to  him  alone.     It  was  their  duty  to  govern  for  the  benefit  of  the 
people  over  whom  they  were  set,  to  take  counsel  with  them 
and  their  leaders  on  the  affairs  of  the  province,  but  they  were 
responsible  to  the  emperor  alone  from  whom  their  authority 
came.     The  Church  had  begun  to  copy  the  imperial  organization 
in  many  things,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter,  and  the  analogy  of  the 
imperial  government  was  never  absent  from  the  thoughts  of 
the  leaders  during  the  second  half  of  the  third  century.     The 
bishops  were  the  dispensatores  Dei  et  Christi,  as  the  governors 
were  the  deputies  of  the  emperor.     They  were  in  God's  place, 
set  there  by  His  authority,  and  responsible  to  Him  alone.     If 
their  authority  was  recognized  then  they  might  take  their  people 
and  their  subordinate  office-bearers  into  their  confidence  and 


them  to  practise  unnatural  tests  of  continence — tests  which  should  never 
have  been  used,  which  might  prove  dangerous  and  which  in  some  cases 
did  prove  dangerous  in  the  end.  Compare  Epistles,  xi.  1  (vii.) ;  xiii.  5 
(vi.) ;    De  Unitate  Ecclesiae,  20. 

'  Epistles,  xl.  (xxxiv.) ;   xli.  (xxxvii.) ;   xliii.  (xxxviii.). 


302         MINISTRY   CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

into  their  counsels,  but  if  it  was  in  any  way  questioned,  then 
they  were  alone  with  God  against  all  gainsayers.^ 

According  to  Cyprian's  idea,  the  bishop  entered  upon  the 
rights  and  duties  of  his  office  through  ordination,  which  was  the 
indispensable  gate  to  all  office  in  the  Church.^  His  selection 
was  commonly  the  act  of  the  people,  but  neighbouring  bishops 
might  select  him  and  present  him  to  liis  people,  whose  assent 
must  always  be  obtained  before  installation.^  Whatever  the 
mode  of  selection  and  of  consecration,  Cyprian  saw  in  these  acts 
the  hand  of  God.    It  was  God  and  God  alone  who  made  bishops, 

^  Epistles,  iii.  (Ixiv.) ;   Ixviii.  (Ixvi.). 

2  Epist.  Ixix.  3  (Ixxv.) : — "  Habere  namque  aut  tenere  ecclesiam  nuUo 
modo  potest  qui  ordinatus  in  ecclesia  non  est." 

3  Cyprian  describes  the  appointment  of  a  bishop  thrice — the  one  being 
his  own,  the  others  that  of  a  bishop  in  Spain  and  of  Cornelius  of  Rome. 
Of  his  own  he  says  : — "When  a  bishop  is  appointed  into  the  place  of  one 
deceased,  when  he  is  chosen  in  time  of  peace  by  the  suffrage  of  an  entire 
people,  when  he  is  protected  by  God  in  persecution,  faithfully  linked  with 
his  colleagues,  approved  to  his  people  by  now  four  years'  experience  in 
his  episcopate ;  observant  of  discipline  in  time  of  peace  ;  in  time  of  per- 
secution, proscribed  with  the  name  of  his  episcopate  applied  and  attached 
to  him  ;  so  often  asked  for  in  the  circus, '  for  the  lions  '  in  the  amphitheatre  ; 
honoured  with  the  testimony  of  the  divine  condescension,"  Epist.  Ux.  6 
(Hv.).  "  You  must  diUgently  observe  and  keep  the  practice  dehvered 
from  divine  tradition  and  apostoUc  observance,  which  is  also  maintained 
among  us  and  almost  throughout  the  provinces  ;  that  for  the  projjer  cele- 
bration of  ordinations  all  the  bishops  of  the  same  province  should  assemble 
with  that  congregation  for  which  a  prelate  is  ordained  ;  and  the  bishop 
should  be  chosen  in  the  presence  of  the  people,  who  have  most  fully  known 
the  life  of  each  one  and  have  looked  into  the  doings  of  each  one  as  respects 
his  habitual  conduct.  And  this  also,  we  see,  was  done  by  you  in  the 
ordination  of  our  colleague  Sabinus  ;  so  that  by  the  suffrage  of  the  whole 
brotherhood,  and  by  the  sentence  of  the  bishops  who  had  assembled  in 
their  presence,  and  who  had  vviitten  letters  to  you  concerning  him.  the 
episcopate  was  conferred  upon  him,"  Epist.  Ixvii.  5  (Ixvii.).  "Cornelius 
was  made  bishop  by  the  judgment  of  God  and  of  His  Clirist,  by  the  testi- 
mony of  almost  all  the  clergy,  by  the  suffrage  of  the  people  who  were 
there  present,  and  by  the  assembly  of  ancient  priests  and  good  men," 
Epist.  Iv.  8  (h.) ;  see  also  lix.  5  (liv.) ;  Ixvii.  4  (Ixvii.).  Compare  Hatch, 
art.  Ordination  in  the  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities,  p.  1518b.  The 
mode  of  appointing  the  bishop  or  pastor  in  the  third  century  as  described 
in  Cyprian's  letters  was  essentially  the  same  as  the  mode  of  appointing 
the  pastor  or  bishop  in  Presbyterian  Churches  at  the  present  time. 


THE   AUTHORITY   OF  BISHOPS  303 

while  it  was  the  bishops  who  made  the  subordinate  office-bearers/ 
His  reason  for  his  strong  and  reiterated  assertions  that  bishops 
were  made  by  God  appears  to  have  been  that  the  appointment 
of  a  bishop,  who  is,  "  for  the  time,  judge  in  Christ's  stead,"  is 
such  an  important  thing,  that  God  who  cares  even  for  sparrows, 
must  control  the  selection  of  bishops.^ 

Once  appointed,  the  bishop  possessed  the  "  sublime  power 
of  governing  the  Church,"  and  was  responsible  to  God  alone 
for  his  deeds.^  He  was  the  autocrat  within  his  own  Church, 
and  every  act  and  office  culminated  in  his  person,  just  as  the 
emperor  absorbed  in  one  man  all  the  legal  powers  which  under 
the  earlier  republican  government  had  been  distributed  among 
several  officials.   ■ 

The  bishop  h^d  entire  charge  of  the  discipline  of  the  congre- 
gation. It  was  his  care  to  see  that  the  brethren  kept  the  divine 
precepts.  It  was  his  duty  to  instruct  the  people  about  what  the 
discipline  of  the  Church  required,  and  to  promote  their  growth 
in  hohness.*  To  this  end  God  might  vouchsafe  to  grant  him 
visions  which  he  was  bound  to  communicate  to  his  people  for 
their  edification.^  In  aU  this  the  elders  and  deacons  might  assist, 
but  always  under  the  control  of  the  bishop.^  To  him  and  to  him 
alone  belonged  the  right  of  "  binding  and  loosing  " — a  right 
which  had  been  given,  he  maintained,  to  St.  Peter,  and  then 
to  the  other  apostles,  and  which  now  belonged  to  the  bishops 
who  were  for  each  generation  what  the  apostles  had  been  for 

I  Epist.  iii.  3  (Ixiv.) ;  xlviii.  4  (xliv.) ;  Iv.  8  (li.)  ;  lix.  4,  5  (liv.) ;  Ixvi. 
1,  9  (Ixviii.). 

*  "  '  Are  not  two  sparrows  sold  for  a  farthing  ?  and  one  of  them  does 
not  fall  to  the  ground  without  the  will  of  your  Father.'  When  He  says 
that  not  even  the  least  things  are  done  without  God's  will,  does  anyone 
think  that  the  highest  and  greatest  things  are  done  in  God's  Church  without 
God's  knowledge  or  permission,  and  that  priests — that  is — His  stewards 
—are  not  ordained  by  His  decree  ?  "  Epist.  lix.  5  (Uv.) ;   Ixvi.  I  (Ixviii.). 

3  Epist.  hx.  2  (liv.) ;  Iv.  (li.). 

*  Epist.  iv.  2  (Ixi.) ;   xiv.  2  (v.) ;   of.  xv.  2  (x.) ;   xvi.  3  (ix.). 
5  Epist.  xi.  3-7  (vii.). 

^  Epist.  XV.  1  (x.) ;   xvii.  2  (xi).  ;   xviii.  (xii.) ;   xix.  (xiii.),  etc. 


304         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

the  first/  No  restoration  of  sinners  was  possible  until  the  bishop 
had  heard  their  confessions,  until  he  had  approved  of  their  signs 
of  sorrow,  or  until  he,  along  with  the  presbyters  and  deacons, 
had  placed  his  hands  on  their  head  in  token  of  forgiveness/ 
He  could  institute  new  laws  of  discipline,  but  always  in  accord- 
ance with  the  Scriptural  rules,  and  more  suitably  after  consulta- 
tion with  other  bishops/  To  him  belonged  the  power  to  pre- 
scribe the  signs  of  sorrow,  and  to  say  what  were  sufficient  in  the 
way  of  prayers  and  of  good  works  such  as  almsgiving/ 

He  was  also  the  head  of  the  whole  religious  administration 
{diligentia).  He  was  the  almoner  of  the  poor  and  the  paymaster 
of  the  subordinate  clergy/  For  Cyprian  seems  to  have  been  the 
first  to  make  payments  to  the  clergy,  a  first  charge  on  the  tenths 
and  free-will  offerings  of  the  congregation/  He  could  give 
or  withhold  the  monthly  payments  ;  and  this  of  itself,  when  the 
elders  and  deacons  were  dependent  on  the  Church  for  their  liveli- 
hood, sufficed  to  make  the  bishop  an  autocrat  over  the  clergy. 

The  bishop  was,  therefore,  according  to  Cyprian,  the  overseer 
of  the  brotherhood,  the  provost  of  the  people,  the  pastor  of  the 
flock  and  the  governor  of  the  Church,  and  all  these  terms  ex- 
pressed the  relations  in  which  he,  as  supreme  ruler,  stood  towards 

^  Epist.  Ixxiii.   7  (Ixxii.). 

2  Epist.  xvi.  2  (ix.)  ;  xviii.  (xiii.)  ;    xx.  3  (xiv.)  ;    Ivii.  1  (liii.). 

3  Epist.  xx.  3  (xiv.): — disponere  singula  vel  reformare.  Cf.  Ixiii.  10,  11 
(Ixii.) : — "  ab  evangelicis  autem  praeceptis  omnino  recedendum  esse  .  .  . 
cum  ergo  neque  ipse  apostolus  neque  angelus  de  caelo  adnuntiare  possit 
aliter  aut  docere  praeterquam  quod  semel  Christus  docuit  et  apostoli 
ejus  adnuntiaverunt." 

4  Epist.  xvi.  2  (ix.): — "They  who  truly  repenting  might  satisfy  God 
.  .  .  with  their  prayers  and  works."  Epist.  Iv.  22  (li.)  mentions  alms- 
giving and  fasting.  De  Opere  et  Eleemosynis,  1  :— "  ut  sordes  post- 
modum  quascumque  contrahimus  eleemosynis  abluamus." 

5  Epist.  vii.  (xxxv.)  ;  xiv.  2  (v.)  ;  Ixii.  (lix.)  ;  xH.  2  (xxxvii) :  — "  ut 
cum  ecclesia  matre  remanerent  et  stipemlia  ejus  episcopo  dispensante 
perciperent"  ;  xxxiv.  4  (xxvii.  3):— "interea  se  a  divisione  mensurna 
tantum  contineant  non  quasi  a  ministerio  ecclesiastico  privati  esse  videan- 
tur." 

^  Compare  Achelis,  Die  Canones  Hippolyti  {Texte  und  Untersuchungen, 
VI.  iv.   193  n.). 


BISHOPS  REPRESENT  CHRIST  305 

them.     But  he  was  more.    He  was  also  the  representative  of 
Christ  and  the  priest  of  God.' 

According  to  Cyprian  the  bishop  was  the  representative 
(antistes)  of  Christ  in  the  commmiity  over  which  he  ruled,  and 
therefore  he  had  the  authority  over  that  single  congregation 
or  church  which  our  Lord  possessed  over  the  universal  Church; 
He  was  the  lord  or  viceroy  over  that  portion  of  God's  heritage; 
But  Christ  had  this  position  of  authority  over  His  people  because 
He  represented  His  people  in  the  presence  of  God  ;  because  He 
was  their  High  Priest ;  because  He  had  offered  for  them  His  own 
Body  and  Blood.  The  bishop,  therefore,  as  the  representative 
of  Christ,  is  the  priest  of  God,^  who  in  the  Eucharist  offers  to 
God  the  "  liord's  Passion,"  and  "  truly  discharges  the  office  of 
Christ  "  when  he  imitates  that  which  Christ  did.  "  He  offers 
a  true  and  perfect  sacrifice  in  the  Church  to  God  the  Father, 
when  he  proceeds  to  offer  it  according  to  what  he  sees  Christ 

^  Epist.  Ixvi.  5  (Ixviii.) ;  "  Ecce  jam  sex  aniiis  nee  fraternitas  habuerit 
episcopum,  nee  plebs  praepositum,  nee  grex  pastorem,  nee  ecdesia  guber- 
naiorem,  nee  Christies  antistitem,  nee  Deus  sacerdotem.'^  Praepositus 
generally  signified  a  miUtary  commander  in  the  later  times  of  the  Republic ; 
it  was  afterwards  used  of  a  magistrate  ;  the  miUtary  association  of  com- 
mand was  probably  in  Cyprian's  mind.  It  is  the  word  from  which  comes 
the  Freuch  prevut  and  the  Scotch  provost.  In  early  mediaeval  Latin  it 
means  the  chief  magistrate  of  a  town — burg-graf,  comes  urbis. 

^  Cyprian's  views  about  the  bishop  as  priest  of  God  and  about  the 
sacrifice  in  the  Eucharist  are  most  clearly  expressed  in  Epistle  Ixiii.  (Ixii.). 
He  says  that  in  the  Eucharist  the  bishop  does  "  that  which  Jesus  Christ, 
our  Lord  and  God,  the  founder  and  teacher  of  this  sacrifice  did  and  taught  " 
(1) ;  he  calls  the  Holy  Supper  the  sacrament  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  Lord; 
(4),  and  "  the  sacrifice  of  God  the  Father  and  of  Christ  "  (9) ;  he  says  that 
in  the  Eucharist  we  ought  to  "do  in  remembrance  of  the  Lord  the  same 
thing  which  the  Lord  also  did"  (10);  "that  priest  truly  discharges  the 
office  of  Christ,  who  imitates  what  Christ  did,  and  he  offers  a  true  and 
full  sacrifice  in  the  Cliurch  of  God  the  Father  when  he  proceeds  to  offer 
it  according  to  what  he  sees  Christ  Himself  offered  "  (14) ;  "  the  Lord's 
passion  is  the  sacrifice  which  we  offer  "  (17).  The  Eucharist  is  the  dominica 
hostia  [De  Unitate  Ecclesiae,  17).  Cyprian's  ideas  about  Christian  priests 
and  sacrifices,  occupying  as  they  do  the  borderland  between  the  purer 
and  more  primitive  ideas  and  the  conceptions  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  cen- 
turies which  were  corrupted  by  so  many  pagan  associations,  deserve  a 
much  more  elaborate  treatment  than  can  be  given  here. 

CM.  20 


306         MINISTRY   CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

Himself  to  have  offered."  The  bishop  brings  the  people  into 
actual  communion  with  Christ  in  the  Eucharist,  and  they  are 
united  to  Him  in  drinking  the  wine  which  is  His  Blood  ;  whilst 
to  God  the  Father  is  again  presented  the  ofiering  once  made 
to  Him  by  Christ.  The  bishop  was  also  the  representative  of 
Christ  because  he  received  those  who  were  introduced  into  the 
Church  by  baptism.^  He  was  believed  to  bestow  the  Holy 
Spirit  upon  them  in  baptism  and  in  the  laying-on-of-hands; 
"  They  who  are  baptized  in  the  Church,"  says  Cyprian,  "  are 
brought  to  the  praepositi  of  the  Church,  and  by  our  prayers  and 
by  the  imposition  of  hands  obtain  the  Holy  Spirit."  ^  Thus 
the  Church  is  built  up  around  him.  He  creates  it  in  baptism  ; 
he  brings  the  members  into  continual  contact  with  their  Lord 
in  the  Eucharist,  now  become  a  sacrifice  in  which  the  communi- 
cants, as  in  pagan  rites,  were  united  to  the  deity  by  partaking 
of  the  flesh  of  the  victim  and  drinking  the  wine  of  the  libation. 
So  that,  to  quote  Cyprian  :  "  they  are  the  Church  who  are  a 
people  imited  to  the  priest  and  the  flock  which  adheres  to  their 
pastor  .  .  .  the  bishop  is  in  the  Church,  and  the  Church  is  in  the 
bishop."  3  Above  all,  the  bishop  is  the  representative  of  Christ 
because  he  is  the  judge  to  whom  belongs  the  power  of  punishing 
or  remitting  sins.  This  idea  is  continually  before  Cyprian. 
"  They  only  who  are  set  over  the  Church  .  .  .  can  remit  sins."  "* 
He  quotes  again  and  again  Deut.  xvii.  12  :  "  The  man  that  doeth 
presumptuously  in  not  hearkening  unto  the  priest  that  standeth 
to  minister  there  before  the  Lord  thy  God,  or  to  the  judge, 
that  man  shall  die."  ^    He  discourses  on  the  sin  of   Israel  in 

^  Tertullian  tells  us  that  it  was  the  bishop  who  baptized  in  hia  De  Bap- 
tismo,  17  : — "  The  summus  sacerdos,  who  is  the  bishop,  has  the  right  of 
giving  it  (baptism) ;  and  in  the  next  place,  tlie  elders  and  deacons,  yet 
not  without  the  bishop's  authority  on  account  of  the  honour  of  the  Church." 
This  is  also  Cyprian's  idea ;  compare  Epistles,  Ixxiii.  7  (Ixxii.) ;  Ixxv.  7 
(Ixxiv.). 

2  E'pist.  Ixxiii.  9  (Ixxii.).  3  E-insL  Ixvi.  S  (Ixviii.). 

4  Ejnst.  Ixxiii.  7  (Ixxii.). 

5  Epist.  iii.  1  (Ixiv.) ;  iv.  4  (Ixi.) ;  xhii.  7  (xxxix.) ;  lix.  4  (Uv.) ;  Ixvi.  3 
(Ixii.). 


PRIEST  AND  SACRIFICE  307 

refusing  obedience  to  the  Prisst  Samuel.'  It  is  the  authority 
of  the  priest  that  he  has  always  in  view. 

But  while  the  thought  of  implicit  obedience  to  the  bishop 
is  foremost  in  his  mind,  the  sacerdotal  conception  was  not 
absent.  He  conceived  that  the  bishops  were  a  special  priest- 
hood and  had  a  special  sacrifice  to  offer.  This  was  a  new  thought 
in  the  Church  of  Christ.  It  was  really  introduced  by  Cyprian, 
and  it  requires  a  httle  explanation. 

In  Christianity  we  find  from  the  beginning  the  thoughts  of 
priest  and  of  sacrifice.  The  two  conceptions  always  go  together, 
and  whatever  meaning  is  attached  to  the  one  determines  that 
of  the  other.  The  idea  of  a  sacrifice  offered  in  the  Christian 
congregation  was  continually  present,  and  from  the  beginning 
it  was  intimately  connected  with  the  Eucharist.  But  the 
thoughts  suggested  by  the  words  were  always  evangelical.  It 
was  beheved  that  all  Christians  were  priests  before  God,  and 
that  aU  had  to  do  the  priestly  work  of  sacrificing.  The  sacrifices 
of  the  Church,  the  bloodless  sacrifices  predicted  by  the  prophet 
Malachi,^  were  the  prayers,  the  praises,  and  the  worship  of  the 
behevers.  The  Holy  Supper,  which  was  the  supreme  part  of 
the  Christian  worship,  was  a  sacrifice  because  it  was  an  act  of 
worship,  and  because  it  combined,  as  no  other  act  did,  the 
prayers  of  all  the  worshippers  and  the  gifts  or  oblations  of 
bread  and  wine  which  were  given  by  the  worshippers  and  were 
used  partly  in  the  Holy  Supper  and  partly  to  distribute  among 
the  poor.  The  idea  of  the  priesthood  of  all  believers  was  fijmly 
rooted  in  the  thoughts  of  the  early  Christians,,  even  although 
the  constant  use  of  the  Old  Testament  naturally  led  them 
from  a  very  early  period  to  draw  some  couiparisons  between 
the  leaders  of  their  public  devotions  and  the  priests  and  Levites 
of  the  Jewish  Church.^  When  they  began  to  explain  to  them- 
selves and  to  others  what  the  sacraments  of  baptism  and  the 

^  Epist.  iii.  1  (Ixiv.),  where  the  rebellion  of  Korah,  Dathan  and  Abiram 
is  also  quoted  to  point  the  same  moral. 

2  Malachi  i.  11  ;    iii.  3,  4.  3  Clement,  1  Ep.  xl.  5;  Didachc,  xiii.  3. 


308         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PEIESTHOOD 

Holy  Supper  were,  it  was  almost  inevitable  that  thoughts  con- 
nected with  those  portions  of  pagan  worship  most  nearly  related 
to  sacraments  should  come  into  their  minds.  Hence  the  pagan 
mysteries  formed  the  outline  of  the  picture  which  presented 
itself  to  their  imaginations  when  they  tried  to  describe  what  the 
sacraments  meant.'  This  inevitable  habit  could  not  fail  to 
bring  many  superstitious  conceptions  round  the  sacraments, 
and  many  such  did  connect  themselves  with  them.  Notwith- 
standing this,  the  evangelical  thought  that  the  sacrifices  of  the 
New  Covenant  are  the  worship  of  the  people,  and  that  the  priest- 
hood is  the  whole  worshipping  congregation  was  always  the 
ruling  idea.  The  sacrifice  in  the  Holy  Supper  was  a  sacrifice  of 
prayer  and  thanksgiving,  and  the  sacrificial  act  was  the  prayers 
and  the  thanksgivings  of  the  worshippers.  Apologists  ^  defended 
the  lack  of  material  sacrifices  in  the  Christian  rehgion,  and 
Justin  Martyr  could  say  that  "  prayers  and  giving  of  thanks 

^  This  is  seen  earlier  than  TertulUan  but  it  appears  most  clearly  in 
his  writings.  In  De  Baftismo,  5  he  says  : — "  Well,  but  nations  who  are 
strangers  to  all  understanding  of  spiritual  powers  ascribe  to  their  idols 
the  imbuing  of  waters  with  the  self-same  efficacy ;  but  they  cheat  them- 
selves with  waters  which  are  widowed.  For  washing  is  the  channel 
through  which  they  are  initiated  into  some  sacred  rites  of  some  notorious 
Isis  or  Mithras  ;  the  gods  themselves  they  likewse  honour  by  washings. 
Moreover  by  carrying  water  around,  and  sprinkling  it,  they  everywhere 
ceremonially  purify  country-houses,  habitations,  temples  and  whole  cities. 
They  are  certainly  baptized  at  the  ApoUinarian  and  at  the  Eleusinian 
games  ;  and  they  presume  that  regeneration  and  the  remission  of  penalties 
due  for  their  perjuries  is  the  cflect  of  that.  Among  the  ancients,  whoever 
had  defiled  himself  with  murder,  was  accustomed  to  go  in  search  of  iDuri- 
fying  waters."  In  the  De  Praescriftionc  Haereticorum,  40,  he  says : — 
"  The  devil  ...  by  the  mystic  rites  of  his  idols  vies  even  with  the  essential 
things  of  the  sacrament  of  God.  He,  too,  baptizes  some,  even  his  own 
believers  and  faithful  followers  ;  he  promises  the  putting  away  (exposi- 
tionem)  of  sins  by  a  laver ;  and  if  I  do  not  forget,  Mithras  there  sets  his 
marks  on  the  foreheads  of  his  soldiers,  celebrates  the  oblation  of  bread, 
introduces  an  image  of  the  resurrection,  and  under  the  sword  wreathes  the 
crown.  What  shall  we  say  to  insisting  on  the  chief  priest  being  the  husband 
of  one  wife  ;  and  he  (the  devil)  has  virgins  who  hve  under  the  profession 
of  chastity." 

2  Compare  Athenagoras,  Aiwlogy  {Plea),  13  ;  Minucius  Fehx,  Apology, 
22. 


PRIEST  AND   SACRIFICE  309 

(eucharistia),  when  offered  by  worthy  men,  are  the  only  perfect 
and  well-pleasing  sacrifices  to  God."  ' 

But  if  the  whole  people  were  the  priests,  and  if  the  main 
thought  in  priesthood  was  authority  and  supremacy  in  judging 
in  all  matters  of  rule  and  discipline,  then  the  people,  the  congre- 
gration,  were  the  rulers  in  the  last  resort.  But  this  primitive 
conception  did  not  suit  the  ideas  which  Cyprian,  the  Roman 
lawyer,  had  about  the  special  omnipotence  of  the  bishop,  the 
representative  of  Christ  in  Heaven,  as  the  local  governor  was 
of  the  Emperor  in  Rome.  His  thought  was  that  the  bishop 
was  the  priest,  and  that  the  people  were  not  priests  but  those 
whom  the  priest  introduced  into  the  presence  of  God.  The 
whole  conception  of  Christian  thought  began  to  change,  and  the 
change  dates  from  Cyprian  and  his  influence,  c^ 

The  changes  made  by  Cyprian  in  the  early  Christian  ideas 
of  sacrifice  and  priest  can  be  best  seen  by  comparing  his  language 
with  that  of  Tertulhan,  his  "  master  "  in  theology.  In  Ter- 
tullian  we  have  the  old  ideas  that  the  prayers  of  the  Christian, 
public  and  private,  are  his  sacrifices,  and  that  all  Christians 
are  priests  because  they  can  offer  sacrifices  of  prayer  and  thanks- 
giving well-pleasing  to  God.  He  calls  the  Holy  Supper  a  sacrifice 
— which  it  is,  a  sacrifice  of  prayer  and  thanksgiving — but  he 
never  thinks  of  it  as  a  sacrifice  of  a  distinct  and  special  kind 
to  be  carefully  discriminated  from  the  prayers  of  the  people. 
On  the  other  hand,  Cyprian  is  very  careful  to  distinguish  between 
prayer  and  the  Holy  Supper  in  the  sense  that  he  never  calls 
the  one  a  sacrifice,  while  he  invariably  gives  that  name  to  the 
other.  He  never  thinks  of  all  the  worshippers  sacrificing ; 
on  the  contrary,  he  is  careful  to  distinguish  between  what  the 
people  and  what  the  priests  do  in  the  sacrament — the  people 
offer  oblations,  but  the  priest  offers  a  sacrifice.  There  is,  accord- 
ing to  his  idea,  a  specific  sacrifice  offered  by  a  specific  (not 
simply   a   ministering)   priesthood   in  the   Holy   Supper.     The 

'  Justin,  Dialogue,  117  ;  compare  Apology,  i.  13,  65-7  ;  Dialogue,  28, 
29,  116-8. 


310         MINISTRY  CHANGING   TO   PRIESTHOOD 

sacrifice  which  is  ofEered,  is,  as  v/e  have  seen,  the  "  Passion  of 
the  Lord,  the  Blood  of  Christ,"  the  "  Divine  Victim."  He  was 
the  first  to  suggest,  for  his  language  goes  no  further  than  sug- 
gestion, that  the  Holy  Supper  is  a  repetition  of  the  agony  and 
death  of  our  Lord  on  the  Cross — a  thought  never  present  to  the 
mind  of  an  earlier  generation.  The  ministry  has  become,  in 
his  eyes,  or  is  becoming,  a  mediating  priesthood  with  power  to 
offer  for  the  people  the  great  sacrifice  of  Jesus  Christ. 

His  thought  of  priesthood  also  leads  him  to  externalize,  if 
the  expression  may  be  allowed,  the  whole  thought  of  sorrow 
and  repentance.  In  early  times  if  Christians  fell  into  sin,  they 
were  required  to  confess  their  sins  pubhcly  and  to  exhibit  mani- 
fest signs  of  sorrow.  These  signs  v^ere  not  always  stereotyped  : — 
prayers  accompanied  by  tears  and  groanings,  fasting  and  giving 
the  food  thus  saved  to  the  poor,  setting  free  a  slave  or  slaves, 
abundant  almsgiving.  The  penitents  were  required  to  perform 
some  open  act  of  self-denial  to  show  that  their  sorrow  was  a 
real  thing.  Of  course  the  tendency  was  to  connect  these  signs 
of  sorrow  directly  with  the  pardon  which  followed,  and  even 
Tertullian  was  accustomed  to  speak  of  such  signs  of  sorrow 
as  something  well-pleasing  to  God,  in  the  sense  that  God  accepted 
them  as  meritorious  and  forgave  on  their  account.  Cyprian 
was  the  first  to  lay  hold  on  this  familiar  practice  of  penitence, 
and  use  it  as  a  means  to  establish  the  power  of  the  bishop.  His 
thought  seems  to  have  been  that  some  s})ecial  "  good  works  " 
were  needed  to  secure  the  pardon  of  God  for  sins  committed  after 
baptism,^  and  that  the  good  works  must  commend  themselves 
to  the  bishop,  who  was  the  "  priest  of  God  "  and  the  "  repre- 

^  In  his  De  Opere  et  Eleemosynis,  Cyprian  declares  that  sins  will  come 
after  baptism  and  that  God  has  provided  a  remedy  for  us  "so  that  by 
almsgiving  we  may  wash  away  whatever  foulness  we  subsequently  con- 
tract "  (1) ;  "  The  remedies  for  propitiating  God  are  given  in, the  words 
of  God  Himself.  ...  He  shows  that  our  prayers  and  fastings  are  of  less 
avail  unless  they  are  aided  by  almsgiving  "  (5) ;  he  quotes  the  case  of  the 
raising  of  Tabitlia  to  show  how  "  cflfectual  were  the  merits  of  mercy  "  (6). 
The  same  ideas  occur  in  the  De  Lapsis,  and  are  to  be  found  throughout  the 
Epistles. 


A  SUCCESSION  OF  APOSTLES  311 

sentativc  of  our  Lord  " — for  with  Cyprian  priest  and  bishop  are 
synonymous  terms. 

Thus  the  earHer  idea  of  a  Christian  ministry  was  changed 
into  the  conception  of__a__mediating  priesthood.  Behind  the 
change  of  thought  was  the  new  conception  of  the  authority  of 
the  clergy  over  the  laity  and  of  the  bishop  over  all.  In  respect 
of  their  historical  origin  the  ideas  of  the  omnipotence  of  the 
bishop,  of  a  succession  from  the  apostles,  and  of  a  special  and 
mediating  priesthood,  all  hang  together,  and  what  made  for 
the  one  made  for  the  others.  No  sooner  had  they  found  entrance 
into  the  Christian  Church  than  they  were  followed  by  a  large 
influx  of  other  alHed  ideas  taken  over  from  the  paganism  which 
lay  around  them. 

This  thought  of  apostolic  succession  which  is  to  be  found  in 
Cyprian  was  very  different  from  what  is  seen  both  in  Irenaeus 
and  in  TertulHan.  It  was  not  a  succession  from  the  apostles 
but  a  succession  of  apostles.  The  historical  matter-of-fact 
succession  disappeared,  and  the  conception  became  a  creation  of 
dogmatic  imagination.  The  thought  of  succession  from  the 
apostles,  in  a  line  of  office-bearers  creating  a  vital  connexion 
between  the  generations  as  they  passed,  was  scarcely  in  Cyprian's 
mind.  Unless  memory  fails  me,  Cyprian  only  once  alludes  to 
it :  "  All  chief  rulers  who  by  vicarious  ordination  succeed  to  the 
apostles."  '    For   Cyprian's   thought   is   that   the   bishops   do 

*  Epist.  Ixvi.  4  (Ixviii.).  Firmilian  of  Caesarea  in  Cappadocia  uses  a 
similar  phrase  : — "  Therefore  the  power  of  remitting  sins  was  given  to  the 
apostles,  and  to  the  Churches  which,  they,  sent  by  Clirist,  estabhshed, 
and  to  the  bishops  who  succeeded  them  by  vicarious  ordination,"  Epist. 
Ixxv.  16(lxxiv.).  And  Clarus  of  Mascula,  in  delivering  his  opinion  at  the 
seventh  council  meeting  at  Carthage  under  the  presidency  of  Cyprian, 
declared  that  bishops  "  have  succeeded  them  (the  apostles),  governing  the 
Lord's  Cliurch  with  the  same  powers,"  Sententiae  episcoporum,  79. 

Hatch  remarks  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  take  this  phrase,  nor  the  term 
Siiccessio  nor  the  corresponding  Greek  which  occurs  in  Eusebius,  8ta8o;^i/, 
in  any  other  sense  than  the  ordinary  one,  viz.  to  express  the  fact  that  one 
officer  was  appointed  in  another's  place,  as  governor  succeeded  governor 
in  the  Roman  provinces.  (The  Organisation  of  the  Early  Christian  Church 
[188,]  p.  105  and  note.)     Dr.  Benson  (183)  in  his  resume  of  the  De  Unitate 


312         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

really  represent,  not  the  apostles,  but  Christ.  As  the  apostles 
were  the  representatives  of  Christ  to  the  first  generation  and  re- 
ceived from  Him  power  to  forgive  sins,  so  each  succeeding 
generation  possesses  representatives  of  Christ,  who  have  the  same 
power  to  forgive  sins.  Hence  the  thought  on  which  he  lays 
so  much  stress,  that  bishops  are  directly  appointed  by  God 
and  not  by  man  ;  the  want  of  any  deeper  idea  of  ordination 
than  a  mere  installation  or  orderly  appointment  to  office  ;  the 
belief  that  the  gifts  which  bishops  possess  of  government  and 
power  to  forgive  sins  are  more  personal  than  official — all  combine 
to  make  his  conception  that  bishops  are  apostles  endued  with  the 
very  same  powers  that  the  twelve  possessed  directly  from  Jesus, 
something  very  different  from  what  is  commonly  meant  by 
apostolic  succession  in  modern  Christendom.  He  founds  the 
divine  appointment  of  bishops  on  the  argument  that  since  God 
cares  even  for  sparrows  much  more  must  He  directly  control 
a  matter  of  such  importance  as  the  appointments  of  bishops  !  ' 
He  holds  that  bishops  who  are  guilty  of  any  heinous  sin  are 
ipso  facto  bishops  no  longer,  and  that  their  congregations  ought 
to  separate  themselves  from  them  and  acknowledge  neither 
their  office  nor  their  authority.^     The  bishops  in  North  Africa 

(§  10)  makes  Cyprian  say  that  the  essential  characteristic  of  the  episcopal 
prerogative  is  that  it  is  a  given,  that  is  a  transmitted  power.  Cj^prian 
undoubtedly  held  that  it  was  a  power  given  ;  but  to  say  that  given  means 
transmitted  is  a  very  palpable  case  of  begging  the  question.  A  comparison 
of  passages  plainly  shows  that  Cyprian  believed  that  the  power  was  given 
directly  and  not  by  transmission  ;  of  course  Cyprian  presupposes  regular 
ordination  (ordinationis  lex),  but  he  also  presupposes  the  plebis  suffragium, 
which  may  be  a  means  of  transmission  as  secure  as  the  imposition  of 
hands.     The  power  with  Cyprian  is  always  a  direct  gift. 

'  This  statement  is  not  a  mere  pious  reflection  ;  it  is  repeated  twice, 
with  all  solemnity,  when  vindicating  the  bishop's  power  to  forgive  sins 
and  to  condemn,  and  when  insisting  on  the  dignity  of  the  episcopal  office  ; 
compare  Epistles  lix.  5  (liv.) ;   Ixvi.  1  (Ixviii.). 

^  Compare  the  letters  about  the  Spanish  bishops  Basilides  and  Martial 
{Epistle  Ixvii.  (Ixvii.) ;  and  about  Fortunatianus,  bishop  of  Assurae  in 
Africa,  who  had  lapsed  as  a  sacrificatus  {Epistle  Ixv.  (Ixiii.).  Cyprian  says  : 
"  A  people  obedient  to  God's  precepts,  and  fearing  God,  ought  to  separate 
themselves  from  a  sinful  praepositus,  and  not  to  associate  themselves  Avith 


THE  CHURCH  AND  COUNCILS  313 

arrived  at  their  decisions  in  the  case  of  the  lapsed  "  by  the 
suggestion  of  the  Holy  Spirit  and  the  admonition  of  the  Lord, 
conveyed  by  many  and  manifest  visions  " — an  inspiration  which 
was  personal  and  not  official/  All  these  things  give  a  certain 
uniqueness  to  Cyprian's  theory  of  apostolic  succession  which 
is  often  forgotten.  But  whatever  his  theory  was,  his  con- 
viction remained,  that  the  bishop  was  the  autocrat  over  his 
congregation,  and  that  where  he  was,  there  was  the  Church. 

The  real  statesmanship  of  Cyprian  was  shown,  not  so  much 
in  his  conception,  theoretical  and  practical,  of  the  episcopal 
office,  as  in  his  making  use  of  the  opportimity  of  the  widespread 
crisis  provoked  by  the  question  of  the  lapsed  to  sketch  a  pohty 
which  would  give  the  thought  of  one  universal  Church  of  Christ 
a  visible  and  tangible  shape.  His  idea  was  not  a  new  one.  The 
conceptions  of  statesmen  seldom  are  novelties.  Councils  had 
been  held  on  ecclesiastical  matters  before  Cyprian's  days.  They 
were  first  held  in  Asia  Minor  in  the  times  of  the  early  Montanist 
movement,  and  had  become  somewhat  common  in  Greece  as 
early  as  the  days  of  Tertullian.^  They  were  called  to  dehberate 
and  settle  not  only  the  deeper  questions  of  faith,  but  the  ecclesi- 
astical usages  to  be  observed  by  the  churches  represented. 
The  habit  of  holding  these  deliberative  assemblies  which  did  in 
some  measure  represent  the  churches  of  a  district  or  province 
was  widespread,  and  enabled  churches  lying  within  convenient 
distance  from  each  other  to  become  a  confederation,  havinsf  the 
same  ecclesiastical  usages  and  rules  of  Christian  life. 

What  Cyprian  did  was  to  seize  upon  what  he  believed  to  be 

the  sacrifices  of  a  sacrilegious  priest,  especially  since  they  themselves  have 
the  power  either  of  choosing  worthy  priests  or  of  rejecting  unworthy  ones" 
Ixvii.  3. 

'  Epistle  Ivii.  5  (liii.).  Cyprian  frequently  had  visions  and  beUeved 
them  to  be  communications  by  the  Holy  Spirit ;  compare  Epistles  Ixvi,  10 
(Ixviii.)  ;  xi.  3,  4  (vii.)  ;  he  was  a  prophet  in  the  old  sense  of  the  word. 
He  also  recognized  the  prophetic  gift  in  others  as  well  as  bishops  ;  compare 
Epistle  xvi.  4  (ix.) ;  xxxix.  1  (xxxiii.),  but  only  in  those  subordinate  to  the 
bishop. 

2  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccles.  V.  xvi.  10  ;   TertulUan,  On  Fasting,  13. 


314         MINISTRY   CHANGING  TO   PRIESTHOOD 

the  principles  underlying  this  practice  and  formulate  them  in 
such  a  way  as  to  make  visible  and  tangible  the  unity  of  the 
Catholic  Church  which  was  universally  held  to  exist.  The 
thought  of  the  visible  unity  of  the  Church  of  Christ  was  as  old  as 
Christianity.  St.  Paul  had  dwelt  on  it  in  his  epistles  to  the 
Ephesians  and  to  the  Colossians.  Cyprian  repeated  it  in  his 
famous  passage,  fehcitously  rendered  by  Dr.  Benson :  "  There 
is  one  Church  which  outspreads  itself  into  a  multitude  (of 
churches),  wider  and  wider  in  ever  increasing  fruitfulness,  just 
as  the  sun  has  many  rays  but  only  one  light,  and  a  tree  many 
branches  yet  only  one  heart,  based  in  the  cHnging  root ;  and, 
while  many  rills  flow  from  one  fountain-head,  although  a  multi- 
plicity of  waters  is  seen  streaming  away  in  diverse  directions 
from  the  bounty  of  its  abundant  overflow,  yet  unity  is  preserved 
in  the  head-spring."  ^  That  was  the  old  old  thought.  Cyprian's 
statesmanship  was  seen  in  the  method  he  formulated  for  making 
this  ideal  unity  something  which  could  take  visible  shape  in  a 
polity  which  would  produce  an  harmonious  activity  throughout 
all  the  parts.  His  practical  thought  was,  that  as  each  bishop 
sums  up  in  himself  the  church  over  which  he  presides,  the  whole 
Church  of  Christ  practically  exists  in  the  whole  of  the  bishops, 
and  the  harmonious  action  of  the  whole  Church  can  be  expressed 
through  the  common  action  and  agreement  of  all  the  bishops. 
This  did  not  mean  to  him  that  every  bishop  was  to  think  in  the 
same  way,  or  to  pursue  the  same  policy,  or  that  there  might 
not  be  very  grave  differences  on  very  important,  almost  funda- 
mental, matters  ;  but  it  did  mean  that  if  they  differed  they  were 
to  agree  to  differ,  and  perhaps  this  last  thought  was  the  most 
important  one  practically.  It  is  easy  to  be  in  accord  when  there 
are  no  differences  to  separate.  Cyprian's  thought  was  that  there 
could  be  and  ought  to  be  agreement  amidst  differences.  He 
preserved  intact  the  independence  of  every  bishop.  The  man 
who  stood  forth  as  the  eloquent  spokesman  of  the  unity  of  the 
one  Church  of  Christ  was  the  champion  of  the  independence 
'  Cyprian,  De  Unitate  Ecclesiae,  5 ;   compare  Benson,  Cyprian,  p.  182. 


INDEPENDENCE  OF   BISHOPS  315 

of  the  most  insignificant  bishop  whose  congregation  might  be 
the  church  of  a  hamlet.  He  was  as  magnanimous  in  his  own 
conduct  as  in  his  thought.  In  the  two  great  controversies  in 
which  he  was  engaged  he  showed  himself  able  to  subordinate 
his  own  feelings  and  cherished  opinions  to  the  wishes  of  others. 
The  African  bishops  did  not  adopt  Cyprian's  scheme  for  receiving 
back  the  repentant  lapsed  ;  they  were  much  more  lenient  than 
he  would  have  been  if  his  opinion  had  prevailed,'  He  felt 
strongly  and  spoke  warmly  on  the  question  of  the  baptism  of 
heretics,  and  carried  his  African  colleagues  with  him  ;  but  when 
the  majority  of  the  Church  was  plainly  against  him  he  respected 
the  decision,  however  he  might  dislike  it.  The  case  of  Therapius 
shows  how  far  he  was  prepared  to  go  in  respecting  the  independ- 
ence of  a  colleague.^  He  insisted  again  and  again  that  one  bishop 
cannot  judge  another,  and  that  no  one  can  judge  a  bishop  but 
God,  so  strongly  does  he  vindicate  the  independence  of  bishops 
and  by  impUcation  of  the  churches  over  which  they  rule.^  The 
unanimity  which  he  pleaded  for  among  bishops  was  not  one  to  be 
produced  by  force  but  by  brotherly  persuasion,  it  being  always 
understood  that  Holy  Scripture  and  the  apostolic  tradition 
were  their  guides."* 

If  we  may  judge  from  some  scattered  allusions  it  is  possible 
to  see  how  Cyprian  conceived  that  his  scheme  might  work  so 
as  to  produce  a  harmony  not  merely  of  bishops  but  of  the  whole 
Christian    community    throughout    the    world.     If    anything 

*  Compare  Benson,  Cyprian,  pp.  156,  157. 

^  Epistle  Ixiv.  1  (Iviii.);  Therapius  had  admitted  to  communion  a  pres- 
byter who  had  lapsed  on  much  more  lenient  terms  than  the  council  of 
African  bishops  had  agreed  upon. 

3  Senlentiae  Episcoporum,  preface : — •"  Every  bishop  has  his  o\\ti  right 
of  judgment  according  to  the  allowance  of  his  liberty  and  power,  and  can 
be  no  more  judged  by  another  than  he  himself  can  judge  another.  But 
let  us  all  wait  for  the  judgment  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who  is  the  only 
one  that  has  the  power  both  of  preferring  us  in  the  government  of  his 
Cliurch  and  of  judging  us  in  our  conduct  there."  Compare  Epistles  Iv.  2, 
4  (h.) ;  hx.  14,  17  (hv.) ;  Ixxiii.  26  (Ixxii.) ;  Ivii.  5  (liii.) ;  Ixxii.  3  (Ixxi.) ; 
Ixix.  17  (Ixxv.). 

4  Epistle  Iv.  6  (U.);    Ixxiv.  10  (Ixxiii.). 


316         MINISTRY  CHANGING  TO  PRIESTHOOD 

requiring  deliberation  arose,  the  first  care  of  the  bishop  was  to 
consult  his  elders  and  deacons,  the  deacons  being  the  "  eyes  and 
ears  of  the  bishop,"  to  let  him  know  what  the  people  thought. 
If  there  was  any  doubt  about  the  opinion  of  the  people  then  the 
question  might  be  referred  to  a  congregational  meeting  ^  and 
deliberated  upon  by  bishop,  elders,  deacons  and  people.^  Cyprian 
always  shows  the  strongest  desire  to  carry  the  people  along  with 
him.^  It  is  not  certain  whether  their  opinions  were  taken  in 
any  formal  way  at  the  councils  held  under  the  presidency  of 
Cyprian  at  Carthage,  but  the  Christian  people  of  Carthage  were 
always  present  at  the  councils.'*  These  meetings  can  hardly  be 
called  "  representative,"  as  Dr.  Benson  calls  them.  An  autocrat 
may  do  his  best  to  consult  the  people  and  to  carry  them  along 
with  him.  Yet  he  can  scarcely  be  called  their  representative. 
In  fact  Cyprian's  conception  of  the  bishop  as  the  direct  repre- 
sentative, not  of  his  congregation,  but  of  Christ,  endued  with 
powers  coming  directly  from  God  and  in  no  sense  from  the 
Christian  people,  was  precisely  the  reason  why  his  conception 
of  a  polity  to  embody  the  whole  Church  has  never  proved  a 
workable  theory ;  and  soon  after  Cyprian's  time  it  fell  before 
another  and  very  difEerent  conception  with  which  Cyprian  had 
no  sympathy,  and  yet  to  which  his  own  led  when  his  thought  of 
the  autocracy  of  the  bishop  was  applied  to  a  wider  field.  We 
can  see  how  his  theory  failed  himself  at  his  sorest  need.     He 

^  Epistle  xiv  4  (v.).  ^  Epistle  xv.  1  (x.). 

3  Albrecht  Ritschl  thinks  that  Cyprian,  like  many  another  autocrat, 
destroyed  the  aristocracy  of  the  elders  and  deacons  by  persuading  the 
people  that  the  monarch's  interests  and  theirs  were  identical ;  Entstehung 
der  altkatholischeii  Kirche  (1857),  p.  558. 

4  Dr.  Benson  calls  Cyprian's  councils  "  representative  "  assemblies,  and 
is  of  opinion  that  they  included  "  a  not  silent  laity  "  ;  compare  Cyprian, 
pp.  191  430  ff.  The  presence  of  the  laity  at  the  councils  which  discussed 
the  question  of  the  lapsed  is  shown  in  Epistles  xvi.  4  (ix.) ;  xvii.  1  (xi.) ; 
xix.  2  (xiii);  xxx.  5  (xxx.);  xxxi.  6  (xxv.);  xliii.  7  (xxxix.);  Iv.  6  (h.)  ; 
lix.  15(liv.);  Ixiv.  1  (Iviii.).  On  the  other  hand  the  most  natural  con- 
struction of  the  following  passages  gives  the  idea  that  none  but  bishops 
deliberated  and  voted  : — xliv.  (xl.)  ;  xlv.  2,  4  (xli.)  ;  lix.  13  (liv.)  ;  Ixiv.  1 
(Iviii.);  Ixx.  1  (Ixix.)  ;   Ixvii.  1;   Ixxiii.  1   (Ixxii.)  ;   Ixxii.  1  (Ixxi.). 


ROME  AND  THE  UNIVERSAL  CHURCH  317 

desired  to  carry  his  office-bearers  with  him.  His  first  idea  was 
to  consult  with  the  office-bearers,  as  was  evidently  the  custom. 
When  he  began  to  doubt  whether  they  would  support  him  he 
turned  to  the  laity.  When  he  began  to  doubt  whether  the  laity 
did  not  support  the  presbyters  rather  than  himself,  he  not 
obscurely  threatened  them  with  the  decisions  of  the  neighbouring 
bishops  ;  '  and  in  the  end  the  consultation  was  not  with  his  elders 
and  deacons,  and  not  with  his  people,  but  with  the  neighbouring 
bishops,  in  what  was  called  the  first  council  of  Carthage,  where 
the  people  of  Carthage  were  undoubtedly  present,  though  prob- 
ably only  as  overawed  assistants. 

Another  conception  of  how  the  universal  and  visible  Church 
cojiLd^make  its  ideal  universality  apparent  to  the  eyes  of  men 
had  been  introduced  before  Cyprian's  days  ;  it  confronted  himself 
during  the  second  great  controversy  which  he  had  to  wage, 
and  it  triumphed  in  the  West  after  his  death.  More  than  one 
bishop  of  Rome  had  put  forward  the  idea  that  the  unity  of  the 
Christian  Church  could  only  be  made  truly  visible  when  all  the 
Christian  churches  grouped  themselves  round  the  bishop  who 
sat,  it  was  said,  in  the  chair  of  St.  Peter^  and  whose  congregation 
had  its  abode  in  the  capital  of  the  civiUzed  world. ^  They  justified 
this  claim  ecclesiastically  by  quoting  our  Lord's  words  to  St. 
Peter,  recorded  in  Matt,  xvi.,  but  its  practical  strength  lay  in 
the  fact  that  they  presided  over  the  church  in  the  city  of  Rome. 
So  strong  was  Cyprian's  influence  in  the  centuries  after  his  death 
that  Roman  CathoHc  canonists  felt  the  need  of  quoting  him  as 
the  supporter  of  their  claims  for  the  primacy  of  the  Roman  See, 
and  accordingly  they  have  interpolated  his  De  Unitate  Ecclesiae 

^  Epistles  XV.  1  (x.) ;   xliii.  7  (xxxix.). 

2  Victor  did  so  in  the  days  of  the  Easter  controversy  and  was  denounced 
for  so  doing  by  Irenaeus  (Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccles.  V.  xxiii.,  xxiv.) ;  Cahxtus 
evidently  made  the  same  claims  and  was  attacked  "nith  bitter  sarcasm  by 
TertulUan  in  his  De  Pudicitia  ;  Stephen  did  so  in  the  controversy  about 
the  baptism  by  heretics,  and  the  assumption  of  the  bishop  of  Rome  tc 
force  his  opinion  on  the  rest  of  the  Cliurch  is  no  doubt  alluded  to  by  the 
phrases  Episcopus  episcoporum  and  tijrannico  terrore  found  in  the  preface 
to  the  opinions  of  the  African  bishops. 


318         MINISTRY   CHANGING  TO   PRIESTHOOD 

in  a  manner  almost  beyond  belief.'  Cyprian  was  the  determined 
opponent  of  this  theory  of  a  primacy  in  Rome,  and  constituted 
himself,  as  has  been  said,  the  champion  of  the  ecclesiastical 
parity  of  all  bishops,  however  insignificant  their  positions  might 
be,  nor  would  he  allow  any  distinction  to  be  drawn  between 
churches  founded  by  actual  apostles  and  those  which  had  come 
into  being  in  later  tlmes.^  He  did  concede  a  certain  pre-eminence 
to  Rome,  partly  on  ecclesiastical  grounds,  and  partly  because 
of  the  greatness  of  the  city.^  But  he  held  that  all  bishops 
had  equal  ecclesiastical  rights,  and  that  the  unity  of  the  Church 
found  expression  in  a  imited  episcopate  and  not  in  the  primacy 
of  an  episcopus  episcoporum. 

At  the  same  time  it  was  almost  inevitable  that  Cyprian's  idea 
that  the  local  church  was  constituted  in  the  local  bishop  to  such 
an  extent  that  without  obedience  to  him  men  could  not  belong 
to  the  Church  at  all,  should  lead  to  the  conception  that  a  united 
episcopate  could  only  be  truly  united  if  all  the  bishops  owed 
obedience  to  one  bishop  of  bishops.  A  one-man  theory  of  the 
local  church  could  hardly  fail  to  suggest  or  to  support  a  one-man 


^  The  extraordinary  history  of  the  interpolations  is  told  by  Dr.  Benson 
on  pp.  200-21  in  his  Cyprian,  his  Life,  his  Times,  his  Work  ;  and  in  Hartel, 
S.  Thasci  Caecili  Cypriani  Opera  Omnia,  pp.  hi.  ff. 

2  Compare  Epistle  Ixxi.  3,  where  the  reference  to  novellis  et  posteris 
indicates  that  Stephen  had  claimed  a  primacy  over  ecdesias  novellas  et 
poster  as.  Dr.  Benson  has  given  a  very  full  analysis  of  the  passages  in 
which  Cyprian  refers  to  the  Roman  See  ;  compare  his  Cyprian,  pp.  193-99. 
It  is  worth  noticing  that  Firmihan  of  Cesarea  in  Cappadocia  concedes  less 
to  Rome  than  Cyprian  does.  He  scoffs  at  Stephen's  claim  to  hold  the 
Successio  Petri  {Epistle  Ixxv.  17  (Ixxiv.) ;  but  then  he  holds  that  the  power 
to  forgive  sins  was  given  to  churches  as  well  as  to  bishops,  which  is  not 
Cyprian's  position  (Ixxv.  16  [Ixxiv.]) ;  "  Therefore  the  power  of  remitting 
sins  was  given  to  the  apostles,  and  to  the  churches  which  they,  sent  by 
Christ,  established  and  to  bishops  who  succeeded  them  by  vicarious  or- 
dination." Otto  Ritschl  has  carefully  analysed  Cyprian's  letters  in  the 
dispute  with  Stephen  of  Rome  in  which  a  good  deal  of  strong  language 
was  exchanged  between  the  two  bishops  ;  compare  Cyprian  von  Karthago, 
pp.  110-41. 

3  Epistle  lii.  2  (xlviii.) : — pro  magnitudine  sua  debeat  Carthaginem  Roma 
praecedere. 


ROME  AND  THE  UNIVERSAL  CHURCH  319 

theory  of  the  Church  universal.  The  theory  that  the  bishop 
owed  his  power,  not  to  the  influence  of  the  Spirit  of  God  working 
in  and  through  the  Christian  community,  but  to  something 
either  given  by  God  directly  or  transmitted  in  such  a  way  as 
to  be  independent  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  membership  and 
above  it,  could  scarcely  fail  to  suggest  a  transmission  of  unique 
prerogatives  to  the  bishop  who  was  supposed  to  occupy  the 
chair  of  St.  Peter.  Men  who  insist  on  an  episcopal  gift  of  grace, 
"  specific,  exclusive,  eflOicient,"  coming  from  a  source  higher  than 
the  Holy  Spirit  working  in  and  through  the  membership  of  the 
Church,  may  protest  against  the  thought  that  their  theories 
lead  to  the  conception  of  a  "  bishop  of  bishops,"  but  the  unsparing 
logic  of  history  sweeps  their  protests  aside. 


The  Roman   State   Religion  and  its  Effects  on 
the   Organization  of  the    Church 


CM.  »2»  21 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE    ROMAN    STATE   RELIGION   AND   ITS   EFFECTS   ON   THE 
ORGANIZATION   OF  THE  CHURCH 

THE  Decian  persecution,  instead  of  stamping  out  Christi- 
anity, strengthened  it.  When  it  was  over  the  Christian 
churches,  pruned  of  their  weaker  members,  felt  stronger  than 
ever,  and  pressed  forward  more  earnestly  in  the  path  of  organi- 
zation and  consolidation.  The  grouping  of  churches  round 
definite  centres  became  more  conspicuous,  the  gradations  of 
rank  among  bishops  began  to  assume  a  more  distinct  form,  a 
large  number  of  bishops  began  to  be  more  than  simple  pastors 
of  congregations,  and  the  lower  classes  of  office-bearers  were 
multipHed.  The  "  great  "  Church,  in  short,  assumed  more  than 
before  the  appearance  of  an  organized  whole. 

The  apostle  Paul  had  taught  his  mission  churches  the  secret 
of  mutual  support  which  might  come  from  building  up  groups 
of  churches  arranged  according  to  the  provinces  of  the  Roman 
Empire  ;  and  two  churches,  in  the  two  chief  centres  of  the 
Empire,  Rome  and  Alexandria,  early  manifested  a  genius  for 
attracting  within  their  respective  spheres  of  influence  the  weaker 
churches  around  them.  Both  were  eminently  fitted  to  be  the 
protectors  and  guides  of  their  fellow  Christian  communities. 
They  both  occupied  commanding  positions ;  they  were  wealthy 
and  could  assist  poorer  churches  ;  and  they  were  generally  models 
of  Christian  generosity  to  their  weaker  brethren.  The  early 
pre-eminence  of  Alexandria  and  of  Rome  can  be  accounted  for 
in  the  most  natural  ways.     When  the  local  church  came  to  be 


324     SYNODS  AND  GROUPS  OF  CHURCHES 

almost  identified  with  the  personaHty  of  its  chief  pastor,  the  pre- 
eminence of  the  church  was  merged  in  the  wide  influence — almost 
rule — of  its  bishop.  Perhaps  the  chief  pastor  of  the  Church 
in  Alexandria  was  the  first  to  stand  forth  as  the  undoubted 
leader  of  the  great  majority  of  Christians  and  of  all  the  confeder- 
ated churches  of  the  vast  and  wealthy  province  of  Egypt  and  the 
surrounding  lands.  In  the  fourth  century  and  in  the  beginning 
of  the  fifth  Athanasius  and  his  successors  wielded  a  personal 
power  and  were  called  Popes,  long  before  the  bishop  of  Rome 
had  attained  equal  influence  in  the  West.  But  if  the  growth 
of  the  influence  of  Rome  was  slower  everything  combined  to 
make  it  surer,  more  lasting,  and  of  much  wider  extent.  The 
Church  in  Rome  belonged  to  the  capital  of  the  civilized  world. 
The  Roman  Empire,  down  to  the  time  of  Diocletian,  was,  in 
legal  fiction  at  any  rate,  the  rule  of  a  town-council  over  the 
world,  and  this  naturally  suggested  the  commanding  influence 
of  a  single  kirk-session  over  aU  the  other  churches.  This  sug- 
gestion, never  wholly  realized,  loomed  before  the  Roman  Church 
from  a  very  early  time  ;  but  its  partial  realization  was  much 
later  than  our  period.  What  presents  itself  from  the  middle  of 
the  third  century  onwards  to  the  time  of  Constantine  is  the 
increasing  tendency  in  the  churches  to  form  groups  more  or  less 
compact  round  central  churches  occupying  commanding  posi- 
tions in  the  Empire,  and  the  churches  of  Rome  and  Alexandria 
are  distinguished  examples  of  such  great  centres  of  groups  of 
churches. 

The  instrument  in  effecting  this  grouping  was  the  council 
or  synod.  Nothing  could  be  more  natural  than  that  the  leaders 
of  Christian  churches  should  meet  to  talk  over  the  affairs  of  the 
communities  under  their  charge,  and  the  earliest  known  instance 
of  this  was  the  journey  of  Polycarp  to  visit  Anicetus  at  Rome 
in  154  A.D.^  This,  however,  could  scarcely  be  called  the  be- 
ginning of  councils.  They,  i.e.,  the  councils,  are  frequently 
traced  back  to  the  meeting  at  Jerusalem,  when  the  apostles, 
^  Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecdes,  V.  xxiv.  16. 


THE   EARLIEST  SYNODS  325 

the  elders,  and  the  whole  Church  assembled  to  consider  the 
question  of  receiving  into  "  fellowship "  the  uncircumcised 
Gentile  converts  of  Paul  and  Barnabas.  But  since,  so  far  as  we 
know,  more  than  one  hundred  years  elapsed  without  the  example 
of  the  Church  in  Jerusalem  being  imitated,  it  can  scarcely  be 
urged  that  this  meeting  was  regarded  as  the  precedent  which  was 
followed.  Most  historians  see  the  real  beginnings  of  the  councils 
in  meetings  "  of  the  faithful,"  held  frequently  and  in  many 
places  in  Asia  Minor,  when  the  difficulties  created  by  the  Mon- 
tanist  movement  (160-180  a.d.)  demanded  consultation ;  and 
the  anticipations  of  councils  may  be  found  in  that  frequent 
intercourse  by  means  of  letters  and  special  messengers  which 
was  such  a  marked  feature  of  the  early  life  of  the  Christian 
communities. 

It  is  not  easy  to  know  what  these  earliest  councils  were  like 
or  who  formed  their  members.  They  were  most  probably 
informal  meetings  of  the  pastors,  elders,  deacons  and  people, 
and  it  is  likely  that  all  present  were  permitted  to  take  part  in 
the  conference  and  have  a  voice  in  its  decisions.  The  prevailing 
troubles  were  talked  over  and  the  best  way  of  meeting  them. 
Whatever  resolutions  were  come  to  had  no  legal  force,  but 
they  naturally  led  to  common  action  within  the  communities 
represented.  Eusebius  gives  a  graphic  account  of  these  earliest 
gatherings.  An  elder  who  had  strong  views  on  the  Montanist 
movement  found  himself  in  Ancyra  where  Montanist  sympathizers 
abounded,  and  where  some  active  partisans  had  exerted  consider- 
able influence  on  the  people.  He  and  a  fellow-elder  had  conferences 
with  the  people  in  the  church,  which  lasted  for  days.  The 
whole  question  was  debated  with  earnestness  in  presence  of  the 
people,  who  were  intensely  interested  in  the  matter.  At  length, 
after  long  discussions,  the  Montanist  champions  were  driven  away 
and  their  sympathizers  silenced.  The  elders  of  Ancyra  begged 
the  visitor  to  write  downjiis  arguments  for  their  use  in  case 
the  question  should  be  brought  up  again.  It  is  added  that  the 
faithful  in  many  places  had  frequent  conferences  which  doubtless 


326  THE  EARLIEST  SYNODS 

resembled  those  at  Ancyra.'  The  technical  words  used,  "  brother- 
hood," "  faithful,"  imply  that  all  Christians,  lay  and  clerical, 
took  part  in  the  discussion  and  settlement  of  the  matter  discussed. 
Such  were  these  earliest  synods. 

We  next  hear  of  them  in  the  Easter  controversy  (about  190 
A.D.).  Eusebius,  writing  more  than  a  hundred  years  later, 
calls  them  "  Synods  and  Conferences  of  bishops,"  but  when  he 
quotes  contemporary  evidence,  such  as  that  of  Irenaeus,  the 
technical  terms  used  mean  that  the  opinion  of  the  whole  Chris- 
tian "  brotherhood  "  was  expressed.  Letters  were  written  in  the 
name  of  the  irapoi-xiai  and  of  the  brethren  of  Gaul ;  ^  and 
"  brethren  "  or  the  "  brotherhood  "  is  the  word  which  even  in 
Cyprian  denoted  the  laity,^  while  -n-apoixia  in  these  early 
days  "  was  neither  a  parish  nor  a  diocese,  but  the  community 
of  Christians  living  within  a  city  or  a  district,  regarded  in  re- 
lation to  the  non-Christian  population  which  surrounded  it."  "♦ 

TertulHan,  writing  about  210  a.d.,  speaks  as  if  it  were  a 
common  practice  to  hold  councils  regularly  throughout  Greece, 
and  praises  the  double  advantage  that  accrued  from  such  meet- 
ings— the  handling  of  the  deeper  questions  of  Christian  life  for 
the  common  benefit  and  the  bringing  vividly  before  the  minds 
of  the  people  the  fact  of  the  universality  of  Christianity.'  After- 
wards synods  were  held  in  Africa,  the  earliest  recorded  being 
about  220  a.d.,^  and  gradually  they  spread  over  the  Christian 
world. 


^  Compare  Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecdes.  V.  xvi.  4,  10 ;    xix.  2. 

2  Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecdes.  V.  xxiii.  2  ;   xix.  2. 

3  Cyprian,  Epistles,  xvi.  2  (ix.) ;  xviii.  1,  2  (xii.) ;  xx.  2  (xiv.) ;  xlvi.  2 
(xliii.). 

4  Hatch,  The  Organisation  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches  (1881),  p.  190. 

5  Tertullian,  De  Jejunio,  1.3  : — "  Aguntur  praeterea  per  Graecias  ilia 
certis  in  locis  concilia  ex  universis  ecclcsiis  per  quae  et  altiora  quaeque  in 
commune  tractantur,  et  ipsa  repraesentatio  totius  nominis  christiani  magna 
veneratione  celebratur." 

**  The  synod  at  which  Agrippinus  presided  and  which  declared  that 
baptism  administered  by  lieretios  was  void ;  compare  Cyprian,  Epistles, 
Ixxi.  4  (Ixx.) ;    Ixxiii.  3  (Ixxii.). 


SOHM'S  THEORY   OF  THE   ORIGIN  OF   SYNODS    327 

These  synods  or  councils  were  the  means  whereby  the  grouping 
of  local  churches,  great  and  small,  around  great  centres,  was 
effected.  They  formed  such  a  very  important  part  of  the  organi- 
zation of  the  Church  in  the  third  and  fourth  centuries  that  it 
is  important  to  imderstand  what  they  were  and  what  they 
became.  Dr.  Rudolf  Solim,'  whose  life-work  has  been  the  study 
of  ecclesiastical  law  and  whose  acquaintance  with  its  manifesta- 
tions in  the  early  centuries  is  excelled  by  none,  has  collected 
and  pieced  together  all  the  information  that  can  be  gathered 
from  the  allusions  of  earliest  Christian  literature  to  this  subject, 
and  has  worked  out  something  hke  the  following  theory  of  the 
origin  and  primitive  meaning  of  the  synod.  Briefly  stated,  it 
is  that  a  synod,  in  the  second  and  third  centuries,  was,  to  begin 
with,  a  means  whereby  a  congregation  or  local  church  received 
in  any  time  of  perplexity  or  anxiety  the  aid  of  the  Church  uni- 
versal represented  by  esteemed  Christians  not  belonging  to  the 
congregation.  He  combines,  and  rightly  combines,  the  accounts 
of  such  synods  as  are  mentioned  above  with  the  accounts  trans- 
mitted about  the  way  in  which  the  pastors  or  bishops  were 
chosen  and  appointed  to  their  congregations  or  local  churches, 
for  it  is  plain  that  one  of  the  uses  of  a  synod  in  the  third  century 
was  seen  in  the  choice  and  appointment  of  the  bishop  over  his 
flock. 

So  far  as  ecclesiastical  regulations  go,  the  need  which  a  small 
and  weak  congregation  had  for  assistance  from  without  was  first 
recognized  when  it  was  made  a  regulation  that  a  Christian  com- 
munity of  less  than  twelve  families,  which  was  required  to 
organize  itself  under  a  bishop,  was  to  seek  the  help  of  the  nearest 
"  well-estabhshed  "  churches.  The  weak  congregation  was 
ordered  to  ask  for  the  assistance  of  three  selected  men,  and 
with  them,  as  assessors,  the  choice  and  appointment  of  the 
bishop  was  to  be  made.  These  three  men  associated  with 
the    congregation  formed  a  synod  of  the  earliest  and  simplest 

^  Sohm,  Kirckenrecht,  i.  247-343. 


328  THE  ORIGIN  OF   SYNODS 

type.     The    regulation  dates   from  the   middle  of  the   second 
century,'^ 

When  this  central  thought  has  once  been  grasped  illustrations 
are  abundant.  In  the  conference  at  Jerusalem  about  the 
admission  of  uncircumcised  converts  into  the  Christian  Church, 
a  conference  in  which  delegates  from  Antioch  sought  the  advice 
of  a  "  well-established "  Church,  the  congregational  meeting 
of  the  Jerusalem  Church  appointed  delegates  to  carry  down  its 
advice  to  the  congregation  or  local  church  at  Antioch  and  to 
assist  the  brethren  there  in  coming  to  a  proper  decision  upon  so 
important  a  matter.  The  real  synod  was  held  at  Antioch,^ 
and  its  members  were  the  delegates  from  Jerusalem  and  the 
community  at  Antioch.  At  the  close  of  the  first  century  dis- 
turbances arose  in  the  Church  at  Corinth,  and  the  Roman 
Church,  a  well-established  Church,  which  may  or  may  not  have 
been  appealed  to,  sent  a  letter  of  advice  and  along  with  it  three 
men  selected  because  of  their  age,  repute  and  experience.^ 
These,  with  the  congregation  at  Corinth,  formed  a  synod  at 
Corinth  of  the  primitive  type,  and  no  doubt  helped  the  com- 
munity there  out  of  their  difficulties.  So  with  the  early  synods 
in  Asia  Minor.  In  the  perplexity  caused  by  the  Montanist 
movement  the  congregation  at  Ancyra  sought  the  aid  of  Zoticus 
Otrenus  and  others  ;  they,  together  with  the  members  of  the 
congregation  at  Ancyra,  formed  the  council  there  and  doubtless 
aided  in  the  other  councils  which  they  wrote  about  to  Avircius 
Marcellus.  Judas  and  Silas,  the  deputies  from  Jerusalem  to 
Antioch,  were  prophets  ;  ^  the  Roman  deputies  who  went  to 
Corinth,  Claudius  Ephebus,  Valerius  Bito  and  Fortunatus,  do 
not  seem  to  have  been  office-bearers ;  Zoticus  Otrenus  and  his 
fellows  were  elders.  There  is  no  mention  of  bishops  with  regard 
to  any  of  these  earliest  councils,  but  it  is  easily  conceivable 

^  Texte  und  Untersiichungen,  II.  v.  7.  8  ;  found  in  English  in  The 
Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons  (1895),  p.  8. 

2  Acts  XV.  27,  30-34.  3  Clement.  1  Epistles,  Ixv.  1 

4  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccles.  V.  xvi.  5  Acts  xv.  32. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   SYNODS  329 

that  when  "  well-established "  churches  were  asked  to  send 
delegates,  "  select  men,"  to  advise  and  assist,  no  men  could  be 
more  suitable  than  were  the  bishops  of  the  churches  appealed 
to,  and  that  bishops  always  formed  a  portion,  if  not  the  whole, 
of  the  advising  deputies  or  assessors.  The  point  to  be  observed 
however  is  that  in  the  earliest  councils  or  synods,  whether  as- 
sembled for  the  purpose  of  the  appointment  of  a  pastor  or  bishop 
or  for  the  purpose  of  giving  counsel  in  times  of  trouble  or  anxiety, 
the  main  part  of  tke.  synod  is  the  congregational  meeting  of  the 
church  to  which  the  delegates  come.  It  is  also  pre-supposed 
in  the  earliest  times  that  "  well-established "  congregations 
did  not  need  the  assistance  of  a  synod  in  the  appointment  of 
their  chief  pastor,  and  that  everything  from  selection  to  ordina- 
tion could  be  done  within  the  congregation. 

When  the  third  century  was  reached  it  soon  became  the  custom, 
though  we  do  not  find  any  ecclesiastical  regulation  on  the  sub- 
ject until  much  later,'  that  the  choice  and  ordination  of  the 
chief  pastor  was  performed  through  a  synod  in  all  local  churches, 
whether  "  well-established  "  or  not,  and  that  the  neighbouring 
bishops  were  called  in  to  be  assessors  to  assist  the  congregational 
meeting.  The  desire  to  make  the  unity  of  the  whole  Church 
visibly  manifest  doubtless  inspired  the  demand  that  a  synod, 
i.e.,  at  least  three  bishops  or  pastors  from  the  neighbouring 
churches  should  assist  at  the  selection  of  the  cliief  pastor  in  a 
vacant  congregation  and  confirm  the  choice  of  the  people  by 
their  ordination.  Still  through  the  whole  of  the  third  century 
the  primitive  idea  prevailed  that  the  congregational  meeting 

^  The  earliest  appearance  of  this  usage  as  a  fixed  ecclesiastical  law  is 
to  be  found  in  the  twentieth  canon  of  the  council  of  Aries  (314  a.d.)  : — 
"  De  his  qui  usurpant  sibi,  quod  soli  debeant  episcopos  ordinare,  placuit 
ut  nuUus  hoc  sibi  praesumat  nisi  assumptis  secum  aliis  septem  episcopis. 
Si  tamen  non  potuerit  septem,  infra  tres  non  audeat  ordinare."  This 
twentieth  canon  of  Aries  reappeared  in  the  fourth  canon  of  Nicea  (325 
A.D.),  then  almost  continually  (Council  of  Laodicea,  canon  13  ;  Council  of 
Antioch,  canon  19  ;  Council  of  Toledo  [-Ith]  canon  19)  until  tlie  regulation 
became  incorporated  in  canon  law.  It  appears  in  the  Apostolic  Con- 
stitutions, iii.  20. 


330  THE  ORIGIN   OF   SYNODS 

was  an  integral  part  of  the  synod.  In  the  case  of  a  vacant 
pastorate  the  new  pastor  was  chosen  both  by  the  neighbouring 
bishops  and  by  the  Christian  people  with  the  elders  at  their 
head,  and,  even  when  the  selection  came  to  be  mainly  in  the 
hands  of  the  assembled  bishops,  the  assent  of  the  people  was 
always  necessary.  The  ordination,  which,  in  the  course  of  the 
third  century,  was  placed  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  the  as- 
sembled bishops,  was  the  sign  of  the  visible  unity  of  the  Church, 
extending  far  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  local  church,  and  made 
the  ordained  pastor  not  only  the  minister  of  the  Church  over 
which  he  was  ordained,  but  also  a  minister  of  the  Church  uni- 
versal,^ 

^  It  is  impossible  to  avoid  seeing  how  the  mode  of  appointment  and 
ordination  of  the-  chief  pastor  now  practised  in  the  great  Presbyterian 
Cliurch  in  its  many  branches  corresponds  both  in  essentials 'and  even  in 
some  uncssentials  with  the  mode  in  use  in  the  third  century  as  that  is 
described  in  the  letters  of  Cyprian  and  in  the  canons  of  Hippolytus.  It 
is  to  be  premised  that  the  bishop  of  the  third  century  Avas  in  ninety-nine 
cases  out  of  a  hundred  the  chief  pastor  of  a  single  congregation  and  in 
the  hundredth  was  at  the  head  of  a  collegiate  Church  such  as  we  see  in 
the  Dutch  and  in  some  German  branches  of  the  Presbyterian  Church ;  and 
that  bishop  and  pastor  are  interchangeable  terms  (Cyprian,  Epist.  Ixvi. 
5  ;  compare  also  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccl.  VII.  xxviii.  1,  whore  certain  bishops 
are  called  "  pastors  of  the  communities  in  Pontus  " ).  We  have  the  f  ollo\ving 
picture  common  to  both.  When  the  office  of  chief  pastor  becomes  vacant 
there  is  a  natural  anxiety  among  the  people  and  especially  among  the  elders 
to  secure  a  good  successor.  They  correspond  with  neighbouring  ministers 
(Cyprian,  Epist.  Ixvii.  5  ;  Iv.  8)  and  receive  testimonies  in  favour  of  one 
or  of  another.  When  they  are  ready  for  an  appointment,  the  ministers 
of  the  bounds  (the  bishops  of  the  province)  meet  formally  in  the  presence 
of  the  elders  and  of  the  people  of  the  church  (the  brotherhood,  Cyprian 
calls  them,  Ixvii.  5)  ;  an  examination  is  made  of  the  state  of  feeling  in  the 
congregation,  of  the  unanimity  of  choice  ("  the  suffrage  of  the  whole 
brotherhood,"  Cyprian,  Ixvii.  5  ;  lix.  6),  and  objections  are  called  for, 
if  there  be  any,  against  the  life  or  doctrine  of  the  person  nominated  (Cyprian, 
Ixvii.  5)  ;  then  follows  the  solemn  ordination  in  presence  of  the  assembled 
congregation.  He  who  has  been  chosen  kneels  before  the  president  or 
moderator  who  places  his  hands  on  his  head  ;  aU  the  ministers  present 
join  with  the  president  in  laying  their  hands  on  the  head  of  the  bishop 
or  pastor-elect ;  the  president  prays  over  him  the  prayer  of  consecration 
in  which  God,  Who  gave  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  early  times  to  His  apostles, 
prophets,  pastors  and  teachers,  is  asked  to  bestow  the  same  Spirit  on  the 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  SYNODS  331 

Synods  assembled  for  other  purposes  than  the  selection  and 
ordination  of  chief  pastors  exhibit  the  same  fact  that  the  con- 
gregational meeting  was  an  integral  part  of  the  synod.  Thus 
in  Carthage,  Cyprian  insisted  that  the  neighbouring  bishops 
were  to  be  asked  to  assist  at  the  determination  of  what  was 
to  be  done  in  the  case  of  the  lapsed,  because  it  was  a  matter 
which  concerned  "  not  a  few,  nor  of  one  church,"  or  it  could 
have  been  decided  in  the  congregational  meeting,  "  nor  of  one 
province,  but  of  the  whole  world."  '  It  had  to  be  settled  by 
the  presence  of  the  African  bishops  at  Carthage  and  by  corre- 
spondence with  Rome.  But  in  any  case  the  presence  of  the 
congregation  of  Carthage  was  presupposed,  and  the  African 
bishops  were  an  addition  for  the  time  being  to  the  ordinary 
meeting  of  the  elders  and  the  brotherhood.^ 

The  same  thought  is  seen  working  at  Rome.  The  Roman 
elders  (there  being  no  bishop)  dealing  with  the  same  question 
of  the  lapsed,  called  to  their  aid  some  of  the  bishops  who  were 
near  them  and  within  reach,  and  some  whom,  placed  afar  off, 
the  heat  of  persecution  had  driven  from  their  congregations.^ 
Wlien  the  conduct  of  Novatian  was  causing  great  anxiety, 
Cornelius,  the  bishop,  called  together  his  elders  and  invited  five 
bishops  to  assist  them  in  their  deliberations.  When  they  had 
settled  what  was  to  be  done  they  called  together  a  great  meeting 
of  the  congregation,  and  there  the  decisive  resolution  was  brought 
forward  and  accepted.^     So  with  other  Roman  synods  on  the 

pastor-elect,  who  is  named  in  the  prayer  (Directory  for  the  Ordination  of 
Ministers,  sec.  8;  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  iii.  11-19).  In  both  cases  the 
presence  of  the  ministers  of  the  bounds  (bishops  of  the  province)  implies 
that  the  act  done  within  the  individual  congregation  is  an  act  of  the 
Cathohc  Church  and  that  the  chief  pastor  in  the  local  church  is  also  a 
minister  of  the  universal  Ciuircli  of  Christ. 
^  Cyprian,  Epistle  xix.  2  (xiii.). 

2  Compare  the  phrases—"  secundum  arhitrium.  vestrum  et  omnium 
nostrum  commune  consilium,^''  Epist.  xliii.  7  (xxxix.) ;  "  Cum  episcopis, 
presbyteris,  diaconis,  confessoribus  pariter  ac  stantibus  laicis,^^  Epist.  Iv. 
.5  (U.) ;   and  so  on  in  many  passages.     But  compare  above,  p.  316  n. 

3  Cyprian,  Epistle  xxx.  8  (xxx.).        4  Cyprian,  Epistle  xlix.  2  (xlv.). 


332  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SYNODS 

same  questions  ;  the  elders,  deacons  and  the  congregation  at 
Rome  were  always  present,  and  the  whole  meeting  was  one  of  the 
Roman  congregation  with  several  (once  sixty)  bishops  added  to 
assist  them  in  their  deliberations.^     The  same  conception  of  the 
sjrnod  existed  in  the  East.     The  celebrated  synod  held  at  Bostra 
in  Arabia  (244  a.d.)  at  which  a  large  number  of  bishops  were 
present,  and  where  Origen  held  a  distinguished  place  is  a  case 
in  point.     The  question  was  the  orthodoxy  of  the  pastor  of 
Bostra,  Beryllus  by  name.     The  discussions,  in  the  course  of 
which    Beryllus    renounced    his    errors,    took    place    ex<     t;7? 
7rapoiy(lm,^  from  which  we  may  conclude  that  the  synod  in- 
cluded the  congregational  meeting,  for  paroichia  always  means 
in  early  ecclesiastical  usage  the  brotherhood  or  congregation, 
and  not  parish  or  diocese  in  the  modern  sense  of  these  terms. 
Indications  of  the  same  usage  are  to  be  found  in  the   account 
of  the  celebrated  synods  held  at  Antioch  about  Paul  of  Samosata, 
the  pastor  of  the  church  there.     A  great  number  of  bishops, 
elders  and  deacons  were  present,  and  took  part  in  the  discussions 
which  must  have  included  the  congregational  meeting,  as  the 
bishop  was  dejiosed,  and  Domnus  was  ordained  in  his  place 
at  the  last  Synod.     Here  we  have  the  interesting  fact  that  the 
chief  discussion  was  between  Malchion,  one  of  the  elders  of  the 
Church  at  Antioch,   and  his  bishop,  and  that  the  assembled 
bishops  who  came  from  a  distance  took  the  side  of  the  elder 
against  his  pastor.     The  whole  aspect  of  the  matter  presents 
the  appearance  of  a  congregational  meeting  enlarged  by  the 
presence  of  a  number  of  bishops  from  without ;  the  theological 
differences  between  the  pastor  and  the  elder,  which  had  no  doubt 
been  frequently  discussed  before  a  smaller  audience,  were  brought 
before    the    assembled    bishops    and    congregation.     Malchion, 
who  led  the  charge  against  his  pastor,  signed  the  decisions  of  the 
synod  along  with  others.^ 

I  Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecctes.  VI.  xliii.  2.  ^  /j^-^    yi.  xxxiii.  3. 

3  The  Synods  held  about  Paul  of  Samosata  are  described  in  Eusebius 
{Hist.  Eccles.  VII.  xxvii.-xxx.).     Tlie  case  is  a  curious  one.     Complaints 


THE  ORIGIN   OF   SYNODS  333 

Dr.  Sohm  completes  his  theory  by  these  additional  suggestions. 
He  holds  that  the  power  of  a  synod  was  always  proportional 
to  the  power  of  the  local  meeting  it  incorporated.  If  the  bishops 
came  to  the  assistance  of  the  body  of  elders  in  a  church,  their 
decision  had  only  the  force  of  a  regulation  issued  by  a  session 
of  elders.  It  had  to  be  submitted  to  the  congregational  meeting 
before  it  became  authoritative.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  meet- 
ing of  bishops  incorporated  a  congregational  meeting,  then  its 
decisions  were  authoritative  at  once,  for  the  final  decision  always 
lay  with  the  congregational  meeting.'  He  also  believes  that  any 
synod,  even  if  only  the  minimmn  of  three  bishops  was  present 
with  the  congregation,  was  believed  to  represent  and  ideally 
was  the  whole  Catholic  Church  of  Christ,"  taking  into  its  embrace 
the  congregation  or  local  church  which  required  aid,  and  that  in 

against  his  orthodoxy,  and  many  other  things,  seem  to  have  been  brought 
forward  by  members  of  his  congregation,  or  at  least  by  a  section  of  them 
headed  by  Malchion,  one  of  the  elders  and  the  head  of  a  liigh  school  in 
Antiech.  It  was  an  instance  of  an  orthodox  elder  and  a  portion  of  the 
congregation  accusing  their  pastor  of  heresy.  These  men  called  to  their 
aid  a  number  of  bishops.  These  bishops  assembled  at  Antioch,  apparently 
in  Paul's  church,  and  Paul  presided  at  the  meetings.  At  the  first  synod 
no  conclusion  was  come  to  ;  so  at  the  second  ;  at  the  third,  Paul  was 
deposed  and  Domnus  was  ordained  in  his  place  (probably  in  268  a.d.).  At 
this  third  synod  the  chief  discussion  was  between  Paul  and  his  elder, 
Malchion  ;  their  speeches  were  taken  dowTi  in  shorthand,  and  copies  were 
in  existence  in  the  sixth  century.  The  result  of  the  decision  of  the  synod 
w-as  a  division  in  the  congregation  at  Antioch,  the  larger  portion  evidently 
siding  with  their  pastor  Paul,  who  retained  possession  of  the  Church  build- 
ings and  of  all  the  property.  It  is  more  than  likely  that  pohtical  feeling 
lay  behind  this  prosecution.  The  Romans,  und(?r  the  Emperor  Aurelian, 
wished  to  gain  posession  of  Antioch,  which  then  belonged  to  Queen  Zenobia. 
There  was  a  Roman  party  in  Antioch  ;  and  Paul  was  a  resolute  partizan 
of  Zenobia.  Six  years  later,  when  the  queen  was  conquered  by  Aurelian, 
and  Antioch  came  within  the  Roman  Empire,  the  Church  property  was 
taken  from  Paul  and  given  to  the  portion  of  the  congregation  which  had 
opposed  him.  As  all  Cliristians  were  still  outlaws  in  the  eyes  of  Roman 
law,  it  is  scarcely  probable  that  this  decision  followed  from  tlie  supposed 
heresy  of  Paul.  It  is  more  easy  to  believe  that  it  was  meant  to  be  a  punish- 
ment dealt  to  the  anti-Roman  faction.  Compare  Harnack,  History  of 
Dognia,  Eng.  Trans.,  iii.  38  f. 
*  Cyprian,  Epistle  xUx.  2  (xlv).        ^  TcrtulUan,  De  Jejunio,  13. 


334    THE  SYNOD  AND  THE  CONCIREGATIONAL  MEETING 

consequence  its  decisions  were  believed  to  express  the  utterances 
of  the  Spirit  of  God  promised  to  the  Church  of  Christ. 

We  may  accept  or  reject  Dr.  Sohm's  interesting  theory.  It 
appears  to  me  to  be  too  ideal  to  be  an  exact  representation  of 
all  the  facts  of  the  case.  But  it  seems  to  be  made  plain  from 
the  evidence  he  marshals,  that  there  was  a  close  connexion 
between  the  congregational  meeting  and  the  synods  which 
played  such  an  important  part  in  the  federation  of  the  churches 
in  the  third  and  following  centuries.  The  congregational 
meeting  was  the  primitive  type  of  the  later  synod.  These  congre- 
gational meetings  had  taken  an  important  place  in  the  churches 
from  the  beginning.^  We  have  seen  how  they  formed  the  centre 
and  source  of  authority  in  the  apostolic  period  ;  how  they  had 
the  supreme  power  in  their  hands  in  the  churches  to  which 
Ignatius  sent  his  letters,  and  how  even  Cyprian  deferred  to  them.^ 
They  were  the  authority  in  the  churches  in  their  primitive 
democratic  stage. 

If  left  to  itself  the  democratic  genius  of  Christianity  might 
have  evolved  an  organization  which,  starting  from  the  unit 
of  the  congregational  meeting,  and  rising  through  a  series  of 
synods  with  widening  areas  of  jurisdiction,  might  have  culminated 
in  a  really  representative  oecumenical  council  or  synod  which 
would  have  given  a  visible  unity  of  organization  to  the  whole 
Christian  Church,  and  at  the  same  time  would  have  preserved 
its  primitive  democratic  organization. 

Cyprian's  unscriptural  and  non-primitive  conception  of  the 
pastor  or  bishop  as  an  autocrat,  claiming  a  personal  obedience 
so  entire  that  any  act  of  disobedience  was  to  be  punished  by 
spiritual  death  or  expulsion  from  the  Church,  contradicted  the 
democratic  ideal  which  the  congregational  meeting  embodied. 
His  principle  that  the  bishop  was  an  autocrat  deriving  his  power 
from  God  directly  by  a  species  of  divine  right  which  owed  nothing 
to  the  power  of  the  Spirit  working  in  and  through  the  Christian 
people,  might  be  based  on  a  misapplication  of  Old  Testament 
^  Compare  above,  p.  54  ff.  ^  Compare  above,  p.  200  f. 


TWO   IDEAS  OF  ORGANIZATION  335 

texts  and  on  an  intrusion  of  the  Old  Testament  priesthood  into 
the  New  Testament  Church,  but  in  reahty  it  was  the  introduction 
into  the  Christian  Church  of  the  Roman  ideas  of  authority  and 
imperial  rule.  These  early  centuries  were  times  of  imperial 
government,  and  democratic  rule,  save  within  limited  areas 
and  subject  to  autocratic  checks,  was  a  thing  unknown.  It 
is  true  that  the  Roman  method  of  government  admitted  a  great 
deal  of  local  self-government  of  various  kinds,  but  these  popular 
assemblies  had  strictly  limited  spheres  of  action  and  had  no 
control  over  the  imperial  officers  who  practically  ruled  the 
provinces  in  the  name  of  the  emperor  or  of  the  senate.^  Cyprian  s 
conception  of  the  autocracy  of  the  bishop  accorded  so  well  with 
the  atmosphere  of  imperialist  rule  in  which  the  Church  of  the 
third  century  lived  that  it  could  scarcely  avoid  being  largely 
adopted.  In  spite  of  Cyprian's  own  hmitation  of  the  autocratic 
idea  to  the  office  of  bishop  it  suggested  another  form  of  organiza- 
tion beginning  with  the  bishop,  rising  through  metropolitans, 
etc.,  to  an  episcopus  episcoporum,  who  in  that  age  could  be 
none  other  than  the  bishop  of  the  Church  in  the  capital  of  the 
empire.  No  sooner  had  Cyprian's  conception  of  the  autocracy 
of  the  bishop  of  the  local  church  been  accepted  than  the  path 
was  clearly  marked  for  an  ascending  scale  of  autocrats  up  to  the 
bishop  of  Rome,  and  the  appellation  of  Pontifex  Maximus 
sarcastically  employed  by  Tertullian  became  the  legitimate 
title  of  the  head  of  the  Church  in  the  capital  city. 

Thus  there  were  two  ideals  of  organization  within  the  Christian 
churches.  On  the  one  hand,  an  autocratic  organization  which 
starting  with  the  bishop  as  the  autocrat  of  the  individual  Christian 
community  ascended  through  metropolitans  to  the  Pope;  and, 
on  the    other,   that  which,   starting  from    the  congregational 

I  Maiquardt,  Rueviische  IStaatdverwaltung,  i.  pp.  503-lG,  gives  the  de- 
tails known  about  the  provincial  assemblies  under  the  Imperial  Govern- 
ment ;  their  powers  (507-9) ;  the  provinces  where  they  existed  (509-16) 
and  the  powers  of  the  imperial  officials  (517  ft'.).  A  good  deal  of  informa- 
tion on  the  subject  is  also  to  be  found  in  Mommsen,  The  Provinces  of  the 
Roman  Empire. 


336  SYNODS  AND  METROPOLITANS 

meeting,  ascended  through  provincial  councils  of  varying  import- 
ance to  an  oecumenical  council  of  the  whole  Church.  These  two 
ideals,  mutually  antagonistic  as  they  were,  subsisted  side  by 
side  within  the  Christian  Church  in  the  end  of  the  third  and  con- 
tinued to  do  so  in  the  succeeding  six  or  seven  centuries.  Neither 
was  powerful  enough  to  overcome  the  other.  The  imperiahst 
conception  proved  the  stronger  in  the  West,  as  was  natural,  and 
the  other  was  the  more  powerful  in  the  East,  but  neither  in  the 
East  nor  in  the  West  was  the  one  able  to  vanquish  the  other.  \y 

In  the  end  of  the  third  century  and  onwards  councils  or  synods 
became  a  regular  part  of  the  organization  of  the  whole  Church, 
and  they  became  more  and  more  meetings  of  bishops  only,  at 
which  presbyters  and  deacons  with  the  people  of  the  church  of  the 
town  where  the  council  met  were  present  but  almost  entirely 
as  spectators.  It  was  natural  that  these  councils  should  meet 
in  the  provincial  capitals,  for  the  roads  and  the  imperial  postal 
system  by  which  travellers  could  journey  all  converged  towards 
those  towns  which  were  the  seats  of  the  Roman  provincial  ad- 
ministration. Conferences  require  chairmen,  and  various  usages 
obtained  with  reference  to  the  natural  chairman.  Frequently 
the  oldest  bishop  was  made  the  president  of  the  assembly, 
and  this  continued  to  be  the  practice  for  a  long  time  in  many 
parts  of  the  empire.  But  gradually  it  became  the  custom  to 
place  in  the  chair  the  head  of  the  Christian  community  of  the 
town  in  which  the  council  met.  The  bishops  of  these  towns 
then  began  to  be  called  metwpolitayis,  but  the  title  was  for  a  long 
time  merely  one  of  courtesy  only,  and  did  not  carry  with  it  any 
ecclesiastical  rank  with  specific  authority  attached  to  it.  In 
the  fourth  century  these  metropolitans  were  entrusted  with  the 
right  to  call  the  provincial  councils  and  even  with  some  super- 
intendence over  the  election  and  ordination  of  the  bishops  of  the 
province.  Of  course  the  man  made  the  office,  and  metropolitans 
who  had  great  personal  gifts  and  force  of  character  insensibly 
gave  their  churches  and  their  successors  an  influence  which  lasted. 
In  this  growth  of  the  metropolitan  organization  we  can  detect 


CHANGES  IN  ORGANIZATION    .  337 

a  disposition  to  be  guided  by  the  civil  organization  of  the  empire/ 

The  second  third  of  the  third  century  also  witnessed  changes 
in  the  organization  of  the  individual  local  churches.  The 
tendency  was  for  the  bishop  to  become  more  than  the  pastor 
of  a  single  congregation.  It  worked  both  in  country  districts 
and  in  towns.  Perhaps  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  this  was  that 
it  had  become  the  custom  to  require  from  the  chief  pastors  the 
devotion  of  their  whole  time  to  their  ecclesiastical  duties,  and 
this  implied  that  the  Church  had  to  provide  the  means  of  liveli- 
hood at  least  for  the  bishops. 

We  have  already  seen  that  whenever  a  small  group  of  Chris- 
tians found  themselves  together,  even  when  they  were  fewer 
than  twelve  families,  they  were  ordered  to  constitute  themselves 
into  a  Christian  Church  with  an  organization  of  bishop,  elders, 
deacons,  reader  and  "  widows."  ^  The  smallest  Christian 
community  was  in  this  way  an  independent  church.  But  this 
was  possible  only  so  long  as  the  bishop  did  not  depend  for  his 
living  on  a  stipend  coming  from  the  congregation.  A  paid 
pastorate  altered  matters.  The  alteration  took  two  forms, 
both  of  which  can  be  seen  working  among  churches  in  the  mission 
field. 

A  very  common  modern  form  is  to  appoint  one  man  the  pastor 
of  several  village  churches  among  which  he  itinerates,  while  one 
or  more  elders  and  deacon^  are  stationed  in  the  little  Christian 
village  communities  to  watch  over  the  spiritual  interests  of  the 
people.  Inscriptions  seem  to  prove  that  this  form  existed  in 
the  uplands  of  Batanea  among  the  small  and  scattered  villages 
there,  and  it  probably  existed  in  other  places.^ 

When  a  small  group  of  villagers  had  been  won  to  Christianity 
through  the  evangelizing  work  of  a  congregation  in  the  neigh - 

'  Compare  Hatch,  The  Organisation  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches 
(1881),  pp.  169,  170;  also  articles  on  Metropolitan,  Primate,  and  Patri- 
arcfude  in  the  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities. 

•  Texte  und  Untersuchwigen,  II.  v.  pp.  7-24  ;  The  Sources  of  the  Apostolic 
Canons,  pp.  7-27. 

3  Hatch,  Organisation  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches,  194. 

CM.  22 


338  CHANGES  IN  ORGANIZATION 

bouring  town,  there  was  often  a  great  unwillingness  to  sever 
the  connexion  between  them  and  the  mother  Church.  We  learn 
from  Justin  Martyr  '  that  the  Christians  came  in  from  the 
country  to  attend  the  services  of  the  town  congregation.  It 
was  always  held  that  a  bishop  could  delegate  his  special  function 
pertaining  to  public  worship  to  his  elders  or  even  to  his  deacons. 
This  principle  could  easily  be  applied  to  the  outlying  mission 
districts  of  a  congregation,  and  the  little  mission  congregations 
became  filials  or  daughters  of  the  town  congregation,  and  were 
served  by  the  subordinate  office-bearers  of  the  mother  Church. 
Thus  the  bishop  became  the  pastor  in  several  congregations 
and  multiplied  himself  through  his  elders  who  became  his  dele- 
gates in  the  pastoral  office.  In  doing  this  the  Church  followed 
civil  procedure,  for  rural  authorities  under  Roman  rule  were 
frequently  placed  imder  the  nearest  municipaUty.  But  we  have 
abundant  evidence  that  for  many  a  century  multitudes  of  the 
small  rural  congregations  remained  independent  churches,  under 
bishops  who  were  often  enough  uneducated  peasants.^ 

The  same  principle  worked  in  towns  also,  and  perhaps  more 
strongly  there.  The  bishop  was  held  to  be  the  head  of  the 
Christian  community  in  one  place,  whatever  its  size  might  be. 
He  was  the  pastor  ;  he  baptized  ;  he  presided  at  the  Holy  Supper ; 
he  admitted  catechumens  to  the  full  communion  of  the  brother- 
hood. By  the  middle  of  the  third  century  the  work,  in  most 
large  towns,  was  more  than  one  man  could  overtake.  Take  the 
case  of  Rome.  We  have  no  record  of  the  number  of  the  Christian 
community,  but  we  know  that  at  the  close  of  the  Decian  perse- 
cution, i.e.,  a  little  after  the  middle  of  the  third  century,  the 
number  of  widows,  sick  and  poor  cared  for  by  the  Church  was 
more  than  fifteen  hundred,  and  that  the  bishop  had  to  assist 
him  forty-six  elders,  fourteen  deacons  and  sub-deacons,  with 
ninety-two   men   in   what   are   called   minor   orders — acolytes, 

^  Justin  Martyr,  Apology,  i.  67  : — "  On  the  day  called  Sunday,  all  who 
live  in  the  cities  or  in  tlie  country  gather  together  to  one  place." 
2  Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecdes,  VI.  xhii.  8. 


CHANCIES   IN  ORGANIZATION  339 

exorcists,  readers,  and  door-keopers.'  At  the  close  of  the  cen- 
tury and  during  the  Diocletian  persecution  there  were  over 
forty  Christian  basilicas,  or  separate  Christian  congregations 
in  Rome  itself.^  In  Alexandria  the  number  of  Christians  could 
not  have  been  much  fewer.  It  is  evident  that  one  man  could  not 
fulfil  the  pastoral  duties  for  such  a  multitude.  At  first  the  idea 
of  the  unity  of  the  pastorate  was  strictly  preserved.  For  ex- 
ample, it  was  for  long  the  custom  in  Rome  that  the  bishop 
consecrated  the  communion  elements  in  one  church,  and  that 
the  consecrated  elements  were  carried  to  the  other  congregations 
whether  they  met  in  churches  or  in  private  houses,  to  be  dis- 
tributed to  the  communicants  by  the  elders  there  in  charge.^ 
The  bishop  was  the  one  pastor  in  every  congregation  ;  the 
elders  and  the  deacons  belonged  to  the  whole  local  Christian 
community  ;  they  served  all  the  congregations  and  were  not 
attached  to  any  one  ;  the  organization  was  collegiate  as  we  see 
it  existing  at  present  in  the  Dutch  Presbyterian  Church.  All 
communities,  however,  were  not  so  conservative  as  that  of 
Rome.  In  Alexandria,  for  example,  while  the  Christians  who 
lived  in  the  outlying  suburbs  were  at  first  reckoned  to  be  members 
of  the  bishop's  congregation  and  had  no  separate  constitution 
for  the  churches  in  which  they  met,  this  was  found  to  be  incon- 
venient. Special  presbyters  were  set  over  the  outlying  congre- 
gations, and  thus  something  like  a  parish  system  under  the 
bishop  was  begun.  But  the  original  pastoral  status  of  the  bishop 
was  always  preserved  by  one  portion  of  the  pastoral  duties 
being  invariably  retained  in  his  hands — the  admission  of  the 
catechumens  to  the  full  communion  of  the  Church.     This  is  still 

1  Compare  the  letter  of  Cornelius,  bishop  of  Rome,  to  Fabius,  bishop  of 
Antioch,  in  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccles.  VI.  xliii.  11. 

2  Optatus  of  Milevis,  De  ScUsmate  Donatiatarum,  ii.  4  (Vienna  ed.  [1893], 
p.  39). 

3  This  custom  existed  in  the  time  of  Innocent  the  First  (450  a.d.)  and 
is  described  by  him  in  a  letter  he  wrote  to  Decentius,  bishop  of  Eugubium 
in  Umbria  ;  compare  the  fifth  section.  The  custom  preserved  the  con- 
junction of  ideas  strongly  insisted  upon  by  Cyprian  between  the  one 
sacrament  and  the  one  bishop, 


340  THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

retained  in  the  modern  episcopal  system,  and  the  fact  that  the 
bishops  alone  are  entitled  to  receive  the  young  communicants 
at  confirmation — for  confirmation  is  simply  the  reception  of 
young  communicants — remains  to  witness  to  the  original  simple 
pastoral  functions  of  the  primitive  bishops. 

The  middle  of  the  third  century  also  was  the  time  when  the 
ministry  became  much  more  complicated  so  far  as  its  subor- 
dinate officials  were  concerned.  Sub-deacons,  exorcists,  readers, 
acolytes,  doorkeepers,  and  even  grave-diggers,  were  added  to 
that  body  of  men  who  were  called  the  clergy. 

Before  the  close  of  the  third  century  the  associated  churches, 
grouped  now  around  recognized  centres,  had  developed  a  some- 
what elaborate  organization  both  in  their  relations  to  each 
other  and  in  the  arrangement  of  the  ministry  within  the  indi- 
vidual local  churches.  Ecclesiastical  archaeologists  are  dis- 
posed to  recognize  the  influence  of  the  political  organization 
of  the  Roman  Empire  in  much  of  this  elaboration.'  This  is  a 
perfectly  natural  explanation  and  there  is  abundant  evidence  to 
confirm  it.  Yet  it  may  be  that  there  was  something  more  specific 
on  which  the  leaders  of  the  Christian  churches  had  their  eyes 
fixed.  If  it  should  ever  become  possible  for  the  associated 
churches  to  come  to  terms  with  the  empire,  as  was  done  in 
the  fourth  century,  there  was  an  organization  which  the  Christian 
Church  would  necessarily  displace.  This  was  the  great  pro- 
vincial organization  for  providing  for  the  due  exercise  of  the 
ofiicial  religion  of  the  empire.  No  account  of  the  Church  and 
its  ministry  during  the  early  centuries  can  avoid  some  reference 
to  that  great  Pagan  State  Church  (if  the  term  may  be  used), 
as  it  existed  towards  the  close  of  the  third  century  when  the 
associated  Christian    churches   were    rapidly   approaching    the 


^  Tliia  has  been  done  with  great  erudition  and  much  original  investi- 
gation by  the  late  Dr.  Hatch.  The  results  of  his  work  are  to  be  found  in 
his  Bampton  Lectures,  The  Organisation  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches 
(1881),  and  in  many  of  his  articles  in  the  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities 
on  Orders;  Ordination,  Primate,  Patriarchate. 


ON  THE  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE  CHURCH       341 

attainment  of  their  end,  and  were  about  to  give  their  religion 
to  the  Roman  Empire. 

The  subject  is  a  difficult  one.  Information  has  to  be  sought 
for  in  inscriptions  on  tombs,  on  public  buildings,  on  coins  and 
in  fast  fading  frescoes  on  the  walls  of  houses  in  Pompeii.  It 
is  full  of  details  which  are  only  partially  known,  and  yet  enough 
has  been  preserved  to  enable  us  to  learn  something  about  it  as 
a  whole. ^ 

It  is  the  universal  testimony  of  historians  that  religion  had 
lost  most  of  its  power  during  the  later  years  of  the  Republic. 
The  temples  were  in  ruins  and  the  practices  of  rehgion  were 

^  Among  the  more  important  books  and  articles  on  tlie  subject  of  the 
imperial  cult  the  following  may  be  named.     They  all  discuss  the  subject 
as  a  whole  or  describe  some  important  parts.     G.  Boissier,  Im  Religion 
Rotnaine  d'Auguste  aux  Atiionins  (1878),  2  vols. ;    Otto  Hii-schfeld,  Zur 
Geschichte  des  romischen  Kaiser  cult  its  in  the  Sitzungsberichte  d.  k.  pr.Akademie 
d.  Wissensch.,  BerHn  (1888),  pp.  833  ff.  ;    also  his  /  Sacerdozi  munici'pali 
neir  Africa  in  the  jimmli  ddV  Institutodicorresjjondeyiza  arcJmeologica  for 
1866,  pp.  22-77  ;  V.  Dury,  Formation  d'une  Religion  ofjicielle  dans  V Empire 
Romaine  in  the  Comptes  rendus  of  the  Academic  des  sciences  morales  et 
politique^,  vol.  xiv.  (1880),  pp.  328  tf.  ;   E.  Desjardins,  Le  Culte  des  Divi  et 
le  Cidte  de  Rome  et  d'Auguste  in  the  Revue  de  Philologie,  vol.  iii.  (1879). 
pp.-  33  ii.     R.  Mowat,  La  Domus  divina  et  les  Divi  in  the  Bull,  epigr,  de  la 
Gaule,  vol.  v.  (1885),  pp.  221  ff.,  308  tf.,  and  vi.  (1886),  pp.  31  fi.,  137  ff., 
272  if.  ;    P.  Giraud,  Les  Assemblees  provinciales  sous  V Empire  Romaine 
(1890)  ;    Lebegue,  U Inscription  de  Vara  Narbonensis  in  the  Revue  Archeo- 
logique  (1892),  vol.  xliii.  new  series,  pp.  76-86,  176-81 ;  M.  liraschenin- 
nikoif,  in  the  Philologus  (1894),  vol.  liii.  (new  series,  vol.  vii.),  pp.  1-17  ff.  ; 
E.   BeurUer,  Le  Quite  Imperiale,  son  histoire  et  son  organisation  depuis 
Auguste  jusquVi  Justinien  (1891)  (by  far  the  most  complete  treatise  on  the 
subject).     Handhuch  der  roemischen  Alterthiimer  by  Mommsen  and  Mar- 
quardt ;   Roemische  Stoats ver wait ung  by  Marquardt,  2ud  ed.  i.  197  f.  ;   iii. 
71  tf.,  463  ff.  ;   Roemisches  Staatsrecht  by  Mommsen,  ii.  752  if.  ;   G.  Wis- 
sowa.  Religion  und  Kultus  der  Roemer  (1902),  pp.  71  If.,  82  f.,  284  ff.,  488  ff. 
(this  gives  the  most  succinct  account) ;  Beaudouin,  Le  Culte  des  Empereurs 
(1891).     A  very  full  account  of  the  hterature  on  the  subject  will  be  found 
in  Roscher's  Lexikon,  ii.  901  ff.  by  Drexler.     I  have  quoted  only  the  books 
known  to  me  personally.     A  number  of  references  to  the  cult  of  the  em- 
perors will  be  found  ui  Ramsay's  The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire  {1893), 
pp.  133,  191,  250,  275,  249,  304,  323  n.,  324,  333,  336  n.,  354,  373,  396,  398, 
465  f.,  and  in  Mau's  Pompeii,  its  Life  and  Art  (1899),  pp.  14,  61,  89  f.,  98, 
100,  103  f.,  106  f..  Ill  f.,  122  ff..  264  ff. 


B42  THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

generally  neglected.     When  the  wars  which  followed  the  death 
of  Julius  Caesar  had  given  the  young  Octavius  the  heritage 
of  his  mighty  uncle,  and  that  master  of  statecraft  set  himself 
to  the  task  of  restoring  an  empire  exhausted  by  long  years  of 
civil  war,  he  recognized  that  a  people  without  a  religious  faith 
is  in  a  state  of  hopeless  decadence.     One  of  his  earhest  tasks 
was  to  attempt  to  revive  the  ancient  religious  rites  of  the  Roman 
people,  and  contemporary  records  tell  what  patience  and  wealth 
he  lavished  on  the  work.     His  political  needs  mingled  largely 
in  this  successful  attempt  to  revive  the  religious  instincts  of  his 
subjects.     He  felt  the  need  for  some  common  sentiment  to 
bind  together  the  provinces  and  peoples  of  his  unwieldy  Empire. 
A  state  which  acknowledged  no  limits  of  race  and  of  nationality 
required  something  more  than  the  will  of  the  emperor  and  the 
dread  of  his  legions  to  unite  it  into  a  harmonious  whole.  He  saw 
that  religion  might  be  the  moral  cement  he  sought,  but  the 
religion  needed  to  be  as  universal  as  the  empire.     To  select  one 
of  the  myriad  cults  which  a  manifold  paganism  presented  would 
have  availed  him  nothing.     He  turned  instinctively  to  that 
outburst  of  popular  devotion  which  had  proclaimed  his  uncle 
a  god  in  his  hfetime,  and  which,  after  his  death,  had  demanded 
that  the  mighty  Julius  should  be  proclaimed  as  a  god  with 
temples  reared  in  his  honour,  sacrifices  offered,  and  a  special 
priesthood  instituted  to  the  new  divinity.^     Out  of  this  popular 
deification  of  Julius  Caesar  there  came,  fostered  by  the  guiding 
hand  of  Octavius,  now  called  Augustus,  a  universal  worship 
of  the  Emperor  of  Rome  which  took  a  three-fold  shape.     In 
almost  every  part  of  the  empire,  Rome  alone  excepted,   the 
Emperor  Augustus  was  worshipped  as  a  god  during  his  life- 

'  Julius  Caesar  was  added  to  the  gods  of  Rome  by  a  decree  of  the  senate 
and  people  in  42  b.c.  : — Genio  Deivi  luli,  parentis  patriae,  quern  senatus 
populusque  Romanus  in  deorum  numerum  rettuht ;  cf.  Mommsen,  Staats- 
recht,  ii.  733.  His  temple  or  aedes  Divi  Julii  in  Foro  was  consecrated  in 
29  B.C.,  and  a  special  flamen  was  appointed  for  the  service  of  the  new 
divinity.  But  Julius  Caesar  was  never  reckoned  as  the  first  of  the  Divi 
Imperatores  ;   they  began  with  Augustus. 


ON  THE  ORGANISATION   OF  THE  CHURCH      348 

time  ;  there  was  the  institution  of  the  Divi,  where  the  dead 
emperors  and  some  near  relations  of  the  imperial  house,  wives, 
fathers,  uncles  and  brothers  were,  by  solemn  decree  of  the  senate, 
elevated  to  the  rank  of  gods  of  the  state  and  were  voted  temples, 
priests,  and  sacrifices  ^lastly  there  was  the  worship  of  Rome 
and  Augustus,  and  Augustus  in  this  instance  was  not  so  much 
the  name  of  a  particular  man  as  the  title  of  the  supreme  ruler 
— a  title  which  itself  implied  that  the  prince  was  something 
more  than  man.^ 

The  worship  of  the  emperor  during  his  lifetime  was  never  part 
of  the  state  religion  of  the  Roman  Empire,  but  it  was  a  cult 
largely  practised.  Private  persons,  societies,  even  communities 
without  sanction  from  the  government  built  temples,  consecrated 
chapels  and  instituted  priesthoods  in  honour  of  Augustus  while 
he  was  alive."  This  was  not  always  done  openly ;  it  was  some 
time  veiled  by  affecting  to  recognize  the  living  emperor  as 
embodied  in  one  of  the  ancient  gods.  Thus  the  ministri  Mer- 
curii  Maiae  in  Pompeii  became  first  the  ministri  Augusti  Mer- 
curii  Maiae,  and  then  simply  the  ministri  Augusti,  and  Livia 
was  honoured  as  Ceres,  Vesta  and  Rhea.  But  this  worship 
of  the  living  rulers  was  never  part  of  the  state  religion. 

The  state  religion  was,  to  begin  with,  the  worship  of  the  Divus 
Julius  along  with  that  of  Jupiter  Optimus  Maximus,  Apollo, 
Vesta  and  Mars  Ultor,  in  Rome  ;  the  worship  of  Rome  and 
Divus  Julius  for  Roman  citizens  in  the  provinces,  and  the  worship 
of  Rome  and  Augustus  for  provincials. 

The  beginning  of  this  new  state  religion  for  the  provinces 

'  "  Impei'ator  cum  Augusti  nomen  accepit,  tanquam  praesenti  et  cor- 
poral! Deo,  fidclis  est  praestanda  dcvotio." 

Mommsen  says  that  the  word  augustus,  like  the  Greek  crc^aoTos,  had 
always  a  religious  colouring  (worshipful)  ;  that  it  impUed  power  so  great 
as  to  be  revered  ;  that  the  title  was  not  shared  by  any  one  during  the  life- 
time of  the  Emperor  ;  that  Tiberius  refused  at  first  to  accept  it ;  and  that 
it  Mas  at  last  imposed  upon  him  by  a  special  decree  of  the  senate  {StaMs- 
recht,  ii.  812). 

2  "  Cultores  Augusti,  qui  per  omnes  domos  in  modum  coUegiorum  habe- 
bantur,"  Tacitus,  Annals,  i.  73. 


344  THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

was  perhaps  the  decree  of  Augustus  of  date  29.  B.C.,  when,  in 
reply  to  memorials  from  the  communities  of  Bithynia  and  of 
Asia,  he  issued  an  order  that  the  provincials  were  to  worship 
Rome  and  Aitgustus,  and  the  Roman  inhabitants  of  these  pro- 
vinces Rome  and  the  Divus  Jvlius.^  The  new  cult  of  Rome  and 
Augustus  in  Spain  dates  from  26  B.C.  ;  this  worship  became 
the  state  religion  in  Roman  Gaul  from  12  B.C.,  and  it  was  organ- 
ized in  Roman  Africa  on  the  same  lines  as  in  Gaul.  Thus  for 
the  earlier  portion  of  the  reign  of  the  first  emperor  the  state 
religion  in  the  provinces  for  all  but  Roman  citizens  was  the 
worship  of  Rome  and  Augustus.^ 

It  is  a  question  whether  this  worship  of  Rome  and  Augustus 
did  not  remain  the  permanent  legal  form  which  the  imperial 
cult  took  in  the  provinces.  Authorities  differ  and  the  evidence 
is  not  clear  enough  to  admit  of  a  decided  answer.^  Upon  the 
whole  the  balance  of  evidence  seems  to  be  that  even  during  the 
lifetime  of  the  first  emperor  the  official  religion  became  the 


^  Compare  Dio  Cassius,  li.  20 ;  Tacitus,  Annals,  iv.  37 ;  Suetonius, 
Aug  lost  us,  52. 

^  Roma  was  never  a  goddess  for  the  Roman  people.  The  beginnings  of 
the  deification  of  the  city  of  Rome  came  from  the  East  and  were  originally 
symbohc  of  the  trust  placed  in  the  Roman  State  by  cities  and  provinces 
in  the  East  which  had  entered  into  treaties  with  the  great  western  power 
and  had  experienced  its  protection.  The  earhest  instance  knoAvn  is  that 
of  Smyrna,  Avhich  in  195  B.C.  built  a  temple  to  lioma  the  protecting  deity 
of  the  city  ;  the  cult  spread  rapidly  ;  even  in  Athens  there  was  a  temple 
to  Dea  Roma.  In  the  East  it  was  also  the  custom  to  associate  as  a  divinity 
along  with  the  city  great  Roman  generals  whose  successes  in  arms  had 
benefited  the  towns  which  created  them  objects  of  worship.  Augustus 
had  such  precedents  for  Rome  and  Augustus  as  the  earher  Rome  and 
Flaminius.     (Plutarch,  Flaminus,  16.) 

3  Beaudouin  (Le  Culte  des  Empereurs)  insists  that  from  first  to  last  the 
official  religion,  recognized  in  legal  documents  as  the  State  religion  in  the 
provinces,  was  not  that  of  the  Divi  Imperatores  but  always  that  of  Rome 
and  Augustus.  This  is  scercely  probable  ;  still  before  coming  to  an  ac- 
curate conclusion  the  inscriptions  found  in  every  province  would  need  to 
be  gone  over  and  analysed  province  by  province  ;  this  has  been  done  so 
far  as  I  know  for  two  provinces  only — that  of  Narbomie  by  M.  Beaudouin 
himself  and  that  of  Africa  by  Prof.  Otto  Hirschfeld. 


ON  THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHURCH       345 

worship  of  Augustus  simply  {Rome  being  left  out)  and  Augustus^ 
being  taken  to  mean,  not  the  person  of  the  emperor  but  the 
symbol  of  the  deification  of  the  Roman  state  personified  in 
its  ruler.  After  the  death  of  the  first  emperor  a  new  develop- 
ment took  place.  Augustus,  who  during  his  Ufetime  had  never 
allowed  himself  to  be  called  Divus,  but  only  Filius  Divi  Jvlii, 
was  by  solemn  decree  of  the  senate  on  September,  17,  14  a.d. 
(he  had  died  at  Nola  on  the  19th  of  August  preceding)  awarded 
divine  honours,  and  took  rank  among  the  superior  gods  of  Rome.^ 
He  was  the  first  of  a  long  line  of  Divi  Imperatores,  and  the  state 
religion  assumed  the  form  it  continued  to  maintain  in  strict 
legal  conception  till  the  time  of  Diocletian  and  practically  till 
the  conversion  of  Constantine  and  the  changes  which  followed 
that  important  event. 

So  far  as  Rome  itself  was  concerned  these  Divi  Imperatores, 
i.e.,  the  series  of  emperors  who  were  consecrated  after  death  ^ 
by  decree  of  the  senate,  along  with  the  Genius  '^  of  the  reigning 

'  Suetonius  says  distinctly : — ' '  Templa  quamvis  sciret  etiam  proconsulibus 
decerni  solere ;  in  nulla  tamen  provincia  nisi  communi  suo  Romaeque 
nomine  recepit "  {Augustus,  52).  Yet  the  evidence  from  inscriptions 
would  leave  us  to  infer  that  the  cult  of  Augustus  was  instituted  in  many 
provinces  without  any  mention  of  Roma. 

*  "  D.XV.  (Kal.  Oct.)  nefastus  prior  ludi  in  circo  feriao  ex  senatus- 
consulto  quod  eo  die  divo  Augusto  honores  caelestes  a  senatu  decroti ; 
Sex.  xlppuleio,  Sex.  Pompeio  cos." 

3  Some  emperors  were  never  consecrated  Divi ;  of  the  eleven  emperors 
from  Augustus  to  Nerva  only  four — Augustus,  Claudius,  Vespasian  and 
Titus— were  deified,  but  after  Nerva  the  consecration  of  the  emperor  after 
death  became  the  rule  which  had  very  few  exceptions.  On  the  other 
hand  as  the  years  passed  the  consecration  of  members  of  the  imperial 
family,  which  was  common  in  the  early  years  of  the  empire,  almost  ceased. 
Livia  was  made  Augusta  on  the  death  of  her  husband  Augustus  and  Diva 
after  her  o^vn  death.  Neither  Cahgula  nor  Nero  was  deified,  but  Drusilla, 
the  sister  of  Caligula,  and  Claudia  and  Poppea  the  daughter  and  wife  of 
Nero  became  Divae.  The  daughter  of  Titus,  the  father,  sister,  -wife  of 
Trajan,  the  wife  and  mother-in-law  of  Hadiian  and  the  wives  of  Antoninus 
Pius  and  Marcus  Aurelius  were  consecrated. 

4  To  worship  the  genius  of  the  emperor  was  not  to  worship  the  hving 
man  ;  the  genius  of  a  man  was  his  spiritual  and  divine  part ;  the  genius 
of  anything  was  its  ideal  reahty  which  lasted  while  the  external  form 


346  THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

emperor,  took  their  place  among  the  greater  gods  of  Rome, 
equal  if  not  superior  to  them.  They  formed  a  compact  group 
of  new  divinities.  Their  names  appeared  in  the  oihcial  oath. 
In  republican  days  officials  had  been  sworn  in  by  a  solemn  oath 
to  Jupiter  Optimus  Maximus  and  to  the  Penates  of  Rome  ; 
the  oath  was  now  changed  (to  take  an  example  from  the  time 
of  Domitian)  to  Per  Jovem  et  divom  Augustum  et  divom  Claudium 
et  divom  Vespasianum  Augustum  et  divom  Titum  Augustum  et 
genium  imperatoris  caesaris  Domitiani  Augusti  deosque  Penates. 
Their  names  appeared  among  those  of  the  deities  to  whom  the 
great  sin-offering  made  by  the  Arval  Brethren  was  offered. 
At  the  installation  of  Nero  the  Arvales  offered  to  Jupiter  Optimus 
Maximus,  to  Juno,  to  Minerva,  to  Felicitas  and  "  genio  ipsius 
(Nero),  Divo  Augusto,  Divae  Augustae  (Livia),  Divo  Claudio." 

In  the  provinces,  where  the  gods  of  the  people  were  not  the 
Roman  deities,  these  Divi  Imperatores  were  the  gods  of  the  state 
and,  along  with  the  Genius  of  the  reigning  emperor,  were  the 
divinities  which  were  everywhere  worshipped.  In  the  eastern 
provinces,  where  the  people  had  been  habituated  to  the  worship 
of  the  reigning  sovereign,  the  cult  of  the  Divi  seems  to  have 
been  inextricably  mixed  with  the  worship  of  the  reigning  em- 
peror ;  but  in  the  west  the  two  seem  to  have  been  clearly  dis- 
tinguishable, and  the  worship  of  the  Divi  was  looked  upon  as 
the  state  religion  (as  it  was  legally  everywhere),  and  it  was  left 
to  private  persons  and  to  cities  to  worship  the  emperor  while 
yet  living. 

Christianity  has  so  impregnated  European  thought  that  most 
modern  historians,  until  within  recent  years,  were  inclined  to 
regard  all  this  worship  of  the  rulers  of  the  Roman  Empire  as 
merely  a  form  of  slavish  adulation.  We  forget  that  when 
polytheism  is  the  religious  atmosphere  in  which  thought  lives, 
there  is  no  such  gulf  between  man  and  God  as  Christianity  has 

changed.  When  the  RepubHc  became  a  monarchy  the  genius  of  the  em- 
peror naturally  took  the  place  of  the  genius  of  the  Roman  people. 


ON  THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHURCH      347 

made  us  know.  If  tliis  worship  of  the  Divi  Imperatores  be  tested 
by  any  standard  that  can  be  applied  to  a  polytheistic  religion, 
it  will  be  found  to  be  as  real  a  religion  as  any  one  of  the  multi- 
tudinous cults  that  paganism  has  produced.  The  household 
shrines  of  Pompeii  attest  how  deeply  it  entered  into  the  private 
life  of  the  Italian  people.  There  gathered  round  it  the  worship 
of  the  old  heroes  of  the  fatherland,  the  all-pervading  ancestor- 
worship,  the  feehngs  of  awe,  reverence  and  thanksgiving  which 
came  from  the  contemplation  of  a  mighty  and  for  the  most  part 
beneficent  power^ 

It  had  long  been  the  custom  in  the  East  to  worship  the  head 
of  the  state,  and  this  worship  had  been  adopted  by  the  Greeks 
as  soon  as  they  became  an  Asiatic  power.  Long  before  Augustus 
laid  the  foundation  of  his  new  state  religion  it  had  been  fore- 
shadowed in  Greece  and  in  Asia  Minor.'  The  worship  of  the 
genius  of  Rome  personified  in  the  Divi  Imperatores  and  in  the 
Genius  of  the  reigning  emperor,  took  root  almost  at  once  and 
spread  amazingly.  The  worship  of  the  personal  reigning 
sovereign  needed  to  be  restrained  rather  than  encouraged. 
Everywhere  we  find  that  the  desire  of  the  people  to  adopt  the 
new  cult  went  in  advance  of  the  attempts  to  spread  and  sustain 
it.  All  over  the  empire  from  centre  to  remote  circumference 
this  imperial  cult  was  received  with  enthusiasm.  It  did  not 
displace  the  ordinary  religions  in  which  the  peoples  had  been 
brought  up.  There  was  no  need  for  that  in  polytheism.  It 
was  added  to  the  religions  with  which  they  were  familiar,  and 
this  everywhere.     Thus  it  became  the  one  universal  religion 

'  Otto  Hirschfeld,  founding  on  this,  declares  that  the  Imperial  cult  was 
neither  a  development  of  Roman  customs  and  institutions  nor  an  original 
creation  in  the  new  world  of  imperialism  ;  it  was  appropriated  entirely 
from  the  oriental  Greeks.  This  it  seems  to  me  is  only  partially  true.  The 
worship  of  the  ancient  kings,  Picus,  Faunus,  etc.,  was  thoroughly  Roman  ; 
and  there  was  but  a  step  between  it  and  the  worship  of  the  Divi  Impera- 
tores. The  worship  of  ancestors  was  thoroughly  Roman  ;  and  it  was  a 
stepping  stone  to  the  worship  of  the  deceased  pater  patriae.  In  India  at 
present  many  a  government  official  whose  rule  has  been  beneficial  in  a 
remarkable  degree  is  worshipped  as  a  god. 


348  THE  EOMAN  STATE  EELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

for  the  whole  empire  and  took  its  place  as  the  ruling  cult,  the 
religion  of  the  great  Roman  state.  Subjects  were  free  to  practise 
any  religion  which  was  national ;  but  no  one,  without  being 
liable  to  charge  of  treason,  might  neglect  to  pay  religious  homage 
to  the  Genius  of  the  emperor  and  to  the  Divi  Imperatores. 

Only  Jews  and  Christians  refused  to  bend  before  the  new 
divinities.  It  was  this  imperial  state  religion  which  confronted 
Christian  confessors  everywhere ;  refusal  to  sacrifice  to  the 
emperor  (either  the  hving  ruler  in  the  East,  or  the  Divi  and  the 
Genius  in  the  West)  was  the  supreme  test  to  which  Christians 
were  subjected,  and  which  produced  martyrdoms ;  Pergamos, 
the  centre  of  the  imperial  cult  for  its  district,  is  called  in  the 
Apocalypse  the  place  "  where  Satan's  throne  is." 

This  imperial  cult  required  priests  to  preside  over  the  worship 
rendered  to  the  imperial  divinities.  Its  great  officials  were 
curiously  interwoven  with  many  of  the  ancient  priestly  colleges 
at  Rome.  It  gave  rise  to  special  colleges  of  sacred  men  who 
belonged  exclusively  to  the  new  cult,  and  it  had  priests  of  its 
own  all  over  the  empire.  The  priests  of  the  imperial  cult  in 
Rome  would  demand  a  special  description  applying  only  to 
themselves,  but  for  our  immediate  purpose  the  organization  in 
the  capital  may  be  neglected.  What  concerns  our  present  enquiry 
is  the  position  and  rank  of  the  priests  of  the  cult  in  the  provinces. 
It  should  also  be  remembered  that  the  organization  of  this  special 
priesthood  differed  somewhat  in  the  East  from  what  it  was  in 
the  West ;  and  this  difference  may  be  very  generally  described 
by  saying  that  in  the  West  the  worship  of  the  Divi  Imperatores 
was  such  a  nev/  thing  that  it  required  a  new  priesthood,  while 
in  the  East  the  new  imperial  cult  seems  to  have  been  largely 
engrafted  upon  the  worship  of  the  local  divinities,  which  neces- 
sarily implied  a  great  variety  of  organization  which  space  does 
not  permit  us  to  describe. 

These  explanations  premised,  it  may  be  said  that  a  network 
of  imperial  priesthoods  was  spread  over  the  whole  Roman  Empire 
throughout  all  its  provinces  and  in  all  its  chief  municipalities, 


ON  THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHURCH   349 

and  that  amidst  the  myriad  cults  which  the  paganism  of  the 
times  produced,  there  was  this  one  great  pagan  state  rehgion 
in  which  all  shared  and  to  which  all  gave  honour,  and  whose 
priesthood  stood  conspicuously  forward  as  the  guardians  of  the 
worship  of  the  imperial  divinities. 

This  priesthood  was  of  two  kinds — the  priests  who  were  the 
representatives  of  the  state  religion  for  a  whole  province,  and 
the  priests  who  were  at  the  head  of  the  religious  administration 
foi^the_municipalities.  The  priests  of  the  imperial  cult  for  the 
provinces  were  great  personages.  They  were  directly  responsible 
to  the  emperor  alone  who,  as  Pontifex  Maximus,  was  the  supreme 
religious  as  well  as  the  supreme  civil  head  of  the  empire.  It  is 
difficult  to  say  whether  they  occupied  an  hierarchical  position 
of  authority  over  the  priests  at  the  head  of  the  imperial  cult 
in  the  municipalities  during  the  first  two  and  a  half  centuries. 
The  probability  seems  to  be  that  they  may  have  done  so  in  the 
West  from  the  beginning,  but  not  in  the  East.  From  the  last 
quarter  of  the  third  century,  however,  when  a  great  reorganiza- 
tion was  introduced,  the  priests  who  superintended  the  imperial 
worship  in  every  province  were  made  the  overseers  of  all  the 
priests  of  the  cult  within  the  province,  and  not  only  so,  but  they 
had  the  oversight  of  the  priests  of  every  pagan  cult  whatsoever 
who  were  within  the  province.  There  was  thus  from  the  be- 
ginning a  pagan  hierarchy  with  its  Pontifex  Maximus  in  Rome, 
its  metropolitans  at  the  head  of  every  province,  and  the  municipal 
flamens  at  the  head  of  the  organization  in  the  municipalities ; 
and  from  the  last  quarter  of  the  third  century  these  pagan 
metropolitans  had  the  strict  supervision  everywhere  of  the 
whole  religious  administration  within  their  provinces. 

These  pagan  priests  of  the  imperial  cult  who  presided  over 
the  provinces  were  functionaries  of  very  high  rank.  They  were 
chosen  from  among  the  wealthiest  and  most  illustrious  of  the 
provincials,  and  were  men  who  for  the  most  part  had  held  high 
office  in  the  civil  sphere.  Great  privileges  were  accorded  to 
them.     They  presided  over  the  provincial  assemblies  which  the 


350  THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

imperial  government  had  created  in  every  province.  They  had 
the  right  of  audience  of  the  emperors  when  they  went  to  Rome  on 
the  business  of  the  province.  They  wore  a  distinctive  dress — a 
robe  with  a  band  of  purple  ;  they  were  preceded  by  lictors  ;  they 
had  special  seats  at  all  public  spectacles.  They  claimed  to  rank 
next  in  precedence  to  the  civil  head  of  the  province,  who  directly 
represented  the  emperor. 

The  cult  in  the  municipalities  was  more  varied,  but  the  priest 
at  its  head  had  a  very  honourable  position.  He  was  a  man 
who  had  usually  filled  the  highest  municipal  offices,  and  he  was 
ex  officio  a  member  of  the  municipal  council.  Everywhere  in 
province  and  in  municipality  the  office  carried  with  it  high  civil 
rank  and  rights  of  precedence. 

This  was  the  religion  and  these_were^jtlie  priests  that  the 
Christian  Church,  or  rather  the  associated  churches,  had  to  sup- 
plant ere  it  could  come  to  terms  with  the  state  and  become,  the 
acknowledged  religion  of  the  empire.  Christianity  could  not 
become  the  religion  of  the  empire  until  this  great  state  religion 
had  been  overthrown  and  its  priests  abolished  or  their  offices 
secularized.  The  question  arises — Did  the  churches  seek  to 
adapt  themselves  to  the  form  and  organization  of  this  great 
imperial  religious  system  in  such  a  way  that  when  the  hour  of 
Christian  triumph  came  the  Christian  leaders  could  at  once  step 
into  the  position  of  those  who  held  the  leading  places  in  it 
and  who  formed  that  great  pagan  hierarchy  ? 

The  answer  seems  to  be  that  in  two  marked  particulars  at 
least  the  Christian  churches  did  copy  the  great  pagan  hierarchy. 
They  did  so  in  the  distinction  introduced  into  the  ranks  of  bishops 
by  the  institution  of  metropolitans  and  grades  of  bishops,  and 
they  did  so  also  in  the  multiplication  of  the  lower  orders  of  clergy 
on  the  model  of  the  organization  of  the  state  temple  service. 

M.  Desjardins,  the  learned  author  of  the  Geographie  Historique 
el  Administrative  de  la  Gaule  Romaine,^  has  investigated  carefully 

'  Desjardins,  Geographie  Historique  et  Administrative  de  la  GavJe  Bomaine, 
iii.  417,  418. 


ON  THE   ORGANIZATION   OF  THE  CHURCH      351 

the  geographical  organization  of  the  imperial  cult  for  ancient 
France,  and  has  compared  it  with  the  Christian  ecclesiastical 
administration  which  succeeded  it  after  the  conversion  of  Con- 
stantine.  The  result  he  has  come  to  is,  that  the  pagan  organiza- 
tion was  everywhere  the  forerunner  of  the  Christian.  His  con- 
clusion is  that,  almost  without  exception,  every  city  which  had 
a  flamen  to  superintend  the  worship  of  Rome  and  Awjustus  or 
of  the  Genius  of  the  reigning  emperor  and  of  the  Divi  Imf era- 
tores,  became  the  seat  of  a  Christian  bishopric  when  diocesan 
episcopacy  emerged — and  the  diocesan  system  began  in  Gaul — 
and  every  city  which  had  a  provincial  priest  of  the  imperial  cult 
became  the  seat  of  a  metropolitan  archbishop.  The  Christian 
hierarchy,  modelled  on  the  earlier  pagan  hierarchy,  stepped 
into  its  place.  When  the  Bishop  of  Rome  claimed  to  be  the 
Pontifex  Maximus  and  to  rule  the  Christian  metropolitans,  and 
when  the  metropolitans  claimed  rights  over  the  bishops  of  their 
provinces,  and  when  these  claims  were  largely  acceded  to,  then 
the  pagan  hierarchy  of  the  imperial  pagan  worship  was  christened 
and  became  the  framework  of  the  visible  unity  of  the  Church  of 
Christ. 

The  same  result  appears  when  the  other  principle  of  associa- 
tion— that  of  councils — is  investigated.  M.  Paul  Monceaux, 
in  his  thesis  De  Communi  Asiac  Provinciae,^  has  shown  how  the 
councils  of  the  Church  estabhshed  themselves  in  the  cities  where 
the  old  assemblies  of  pagan  times  had  met  under  the  presidency 
of  the  provincial  priests  of  the  imperial  cult,  and  how  these 
Christian  councils  had  frequently  the  same  number  of  members 
as  attended  the  pagan  assemblies.  The  organization  of  the 
imperial  cult  or  the  Roman  pagan  state  religion  was  copied,  to 
be  supplanted,  by  the  Christian  churches. 

The  investigations  which  have  led  to  these  results  have  not 

been  prosecuted  with  regard  to  every  province  of  the  empire, 

and  there  is  still  room  for  a  great  deal  of  archaeological  research ; 

but  where  the  subject  has  been  examined  the  results  show  the 

*  Monceaux,  De  Communi  Asiae  Provinciae,  pp.  117  ff. 


352   THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

closG  resemblance  between  tlie  pagan  and  the  succeeding  Christian 
organization.  The  Abbe  Beurlier,  whose  monograph  Le  Culte 
Imperial  is  the  most  detailed  account  of  the  subject  yet  published, 
appreciates  the  force  of  the  arguments  of  MM.  Desjardins  and 
Monceaux,  but  explains  that  this  close  correspondence  did  not 
necessarily  imply  that  the  Christian  Church  copied  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  state  rehgion  of  pagan  Rome.  He  thinks  that  the 
leaders  of  the  Christian  churches  followed  so  closely  in  the  foot- 
steps of  the  pagan  religious  administration  because  the  Christian 
Church  found  it  necessary  to  cover  the  same  ground,  and  took 
advantage  of  the  same  imperial  administration  and  its  land 
divisions.^  He  admits  that  the  organization  of  the  imperial 
state  religion  did  not  exactly  follow  the  civil  administration  ; 
that  some  provinces  had  no  provincial  priest,  and  that  others 
had  more  than  one  ;  and  that  the  organization  of  the  Christian 
Church  followed  these  deviations.  But  he  is  of  opinion  that  all 
this  can  be  explained  by  natural  causes  common  to  the  needs 
of  both  organizations.  "  The  geographical  reasons  which  had 
grouped  together  cities  to  render  a  common  worship  to  Augustus, 
and  which  had  led  them  to  establish  the  centre  of  the  cult  some- 
times in  the  capital  of  the  province,  sometimes  at  a  point  where 
several  provinces  met,  or,  as  in  Asia,  in  a  certain  number  of 
cities  rivalling  each  other  in  size,  acted  in  the  same  way  in  group- 
ing together  the  bishops  of  the  small  towns  of  the  province, 
and  .consequently  in  gradually  increasing  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
bishop  in  the  principal  centres." 

There  are,  however,  coincidences  which  the  distribution  of 
population  and  the  geographical  utility  of  centres  will  not  fully 
account  for.  The  Christian  bishops — the  metropolitans  and 
their  urban  bishops — had  assigned  to  them  under  the  Christian 
emperors  who  followed  Constantine  the  same  powers  to  in- 
vestigate contraventions  of  religious  arrangements  which  in  the 
pagan  days  belonged  to  the  provincial  and  municipal  priests 
of  the  imperial  cult.  Nor  will  it  explain  how  Christian  bishops 
*  Beurlier,  Le  Cvlte  Imperial,  pp.  304-307. 


ON  THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHURCH   353 

of  important  centres  demanded  and  obtained  from  Christian 
emperors  the  same  places  of  civil  precedent  which  belonged  to 
the  provincial  priests  of  the  Divi  Imperatores.  The  fact  that  the 
chief  ecclesiastic  in  England  has  to  this  day  precedence  of  every 
one  save  princes  of  the  blood  comes  down  through  long  genera- 
tions, a  legacy  from  the  state  paganism  of  the  old  Roman  empire. 
"  The  conquering  Christian  Church,"  as  Mommsen  says,  "  took 
its  hierarchic  weapons  from  the  arsenal  of  the  enemy."  '     i 

The  modelhng  of  the  Church  on  the  organization  of  the  imperial 
cult  grew  more  intimate  as  the  decades  passed,  and  the  re- 
semblance between  them  stronger  when  the  recognition  of  the 
Christian  reUgion  by  the  state  gave  the  leaders  of  the  Church 
more  opportunities.  The  pagan  title  of  Pontifex  Maximus, 
applied  in  scorn  by  Tertullian  ^  in  the  beginning  of  the  third 
century  to  an  overweening  Bishop  of  Rome,  was  appropriated 
by  the  Christian  bishop  of  the  capital  and  still  remains,  and  with 
it  the  implied  claim  to  be  the  ruler  over  the  whole  religious 
administration  of  the  empire.  The  vestments  of  the  clergy, 
unknown  in  these  early  centuries — dalmatic,  chasuble,  stole 
and  maniple — were  all  taken  over  by  the  Christian  clergy  from 
the  Roman  magistracy  ;  ^  the  word  Bull,  to  denote  a  papal 
rescript,  was  borrowed  from  the  old  imperial  administration — 
but  these  things  take  us  far  beyond  our  period. 

The  imitation  of  the  pagan  priesthood  was  also  seen  within  our 
period  in  the  multiplication  of  subordinate  ecclesiastical  offices. 
The  second  half  of  the  third  and  the  fourth  century  witnessed 
an  increase  in  the  lower  orders  of  the  clergy,  both  in  the  East  and 
in  the  West.  The  organizing  genius  of  the  Roman  Church 
led  the  way.  The  institution  of  these  minor  orders,  as  they  were 
called,    can   almost   be   dated.      They   began   about   the   year 

^  Mommsen,  The  Provinces  of  the  Roimui  Empire  (1886),  i.  349. 

^  Tertullian,  De  Pudicitia,  1. 

3  Bock,  GcschicMe  dcr  Liturgisclicn  Gewdnder  des  Mittelalters  (1859)  ; 
Marriot,  Vcstiariiim  Christianum  (1808)  ;  also,  but  not  so  exact,  Stanley's 
Christian  Institutions  (1881),  pp.  1-48  H. 

CM.  23 


354  THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

236  A.D.  So  far  as  the  West  is  concerned,  the  minor  orders 
seem  to  have  reached  their  completion  by  the  beginning  of  the 
fourth  centm-y,  if  not  a  little  earlier.^  We  find  included  in  the 
dergy,  besides  the  bishops,  elders  and  deacons,  subdeacons, 
readers,  exorcists,  acolytes,  door-keepers  and  grave-diggers. 
The  subdeacons  are  evidently  developed  from  the  deacons. 
The  readers  and  the  exorcists  represent  the  old  prophetic  min- 
istry.^ The  acolytes  and  the  door-keepers  were  added  to  the 
dergy  in  imitation  of  the  officials  in  the  state  temples  during 
the  days  of  paganism. 

The  service  of  priests  in  the  state  temples  was  so  arranged 
that  there  was  a  higher  and  a  lower  priesthood,  and  that  the 
members  of  the  latter  were  looked  upon  as  the  personal  attend- 
ants of  the  former.  The  one  was  set  apart  for  the  performance 
of  the  sacrifices  and  other  holy  mysteries,  the  others  were  their 
servants  who  performed  the  menial  parts  of  the  services.  At 
first  they  were  slaves  ;  afterwards  they  were  usually  freed-men  ; 
these  servant  priests  could  never  rise  to  be  priests  of  the  higher 
class.  They  had  difierent  names,  all  of  which  conveyed  their 
menial  position  ;  they  were  the  body-servants,  the  messengers, 
the    robe-keepers,    etc.,  of    the  higher  priests.      Besides  these 

^  The  final  form  which  the  new  organization  of  the  congregation  took, 
says  Harnack,  "  was  characterized  by  four  moments  : —  (1)  by  tlie  quaUty 
of  the  sacrificing  priesthood,  who  now  took  the  position  of  higher  clergy, 
and  were  settled  in  it  by  a  solemn  consecration  ;  (2)  by  a  comprcliensive 
adoption  of  the  complicated  forms  of  the  heathen  worship,  of  the  temple 
service,  and  of  the  priesthood,  as  well  as  by  the  development  of  the  idea 
of  a  magical  power  and  real  efficacy  of  sacred  actions  ;  (3)  by  the  strict 
and  pei'fect  carrying  out  of  the  clerical  organization  in  the  sense  that 
everything,  however  old,  of  dignities,  claims  and  rights  should  be  excluded, 
or  at  any  rate  made  over  and  subordinated  to  this  organization  ;  and  (4) 
by  the  dying  out,  that  is  by  the  extermination,  of  the  last  remains  of  the 
cliarismata,  Avhich  under  the  new  ideas  Avere  dangerous,  seldom  appearing, 
and  often  compromising  and  chscrediting  as  far  as  they  rose  above  the 
ranks  of  harmless."  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons  (1895,  Eng.  Trans.), 
p.  83. 

^  Compare  Harnack's  masterly  constructive  bit  of  historical  criticism, 
his  essay  on  The  Origin  of  the  Readership  and  of  the  other  Minor  Orders, 
appended  to  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  pp.  54  ff. 


ON  THE   ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHURCH      355 

servants  of  the  sacred  persons,  there  were  servants  of  the  holy 
places  or  temples.  There  was  always  a  keeper  {aedituus),  and 
he  had  various  servants  under  him,  whose  duty  it  was  to  open, 
shut  and  clean  the  sacred  place  ;  to  show  strangers  its  curio- 
sities ;  to  allow  those  persons  who  had  permission  to  offer  prayers 
and  present  offerings  according  to  the  rules  of  the  temple,  and  to 
refuse  admission  to  all  others.  All  these  attendants  of  the  lower 
class— whether  servants  of  the  higher  priests  or  servants  of  the 
sacred  place— were  included  in  the  temple  ministry,  and  had  in 
consequence  their  definite  share  in  the  temple  offerings." 

The  acolytes  and  the  door-keepers  {ostiarii,  7ru\copo\)  corre- 
spond to  these  two  classes  of  the  loAver  priesthood  in  the  pagan 
state  temples.  The  acdyte  {olkoXouOo^')  was  originally  an 
attendant,  a  scholar,  a  follower,  or  more  definitely  the  boy  or 
man-servant  who  followed  his  master  when  the  latter  went  out 
of  his  house.  They  were  the  servants  of  the  Christian  priests 
doing  all  manner  of  services  for  them,  carrying  their  messages 
or  letters,"*  and  in  general  acting  like  the  cdatores  of  the  state 
temples.  The  door-keepers  or  ostiarii  had  the  same  duties 
in  the  Christian  churches  that  the  aeditui  had  in  the  state  temples. 
"  He  had  to  look  after  the  opening  and  the  shutting  of  the  doors 
to  watch  over  the  coming  in  and  out  of  the  faithful,  to  refuse 
entrance  to  suspicious  persons,  and,  from  the  date  of  the  more 
strict  separation  between  the  missa  catechumenormn  and  the 
missa  fidelium,  to  close  the  doors,  after  the  dismissal  of  the 
catechumens,  against  those  doing  penance  and  against  un- 
believers.    He  first  became  necessary  when  there  were  special 


^  Compare  what  Marquardb  says  about  the  state  temples  and  their 
attendants  and  about  the  state  priests  in  his  StaatsverwaUung,  Pt.  ii. 
{Handbuch  dcr  Rdinischeii  Alterthiimer,  Mommsen  and  Marquardt,  VI.). 

2  Aeolytcs  are  mentioned  as  carrying  letters  in  Cyprian's  Epistles  fre- 
quently :— xlv.  4  (xU.)  ;  xlix.  3  (xlv.)  ;  lii.  1  (xlvi.)  ;  lix.  1,  9  (Uv.)  ;  Ixxviii. 
1  (Ixxviii.) ;  Ixxix.  The  point  is,  of  course,  not  that  Christian  bishops 
should  have  persons  to  carry  tiicir  letters,  but  that  these  acolytes  acting 
as  the  servants  of  the  bishbps  should  be  reckoned  among  the  derg>/. 


356   THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

church  building's,  and  when  they,  like  temples,  together  with 
the  ceremonial  of  divine  service,  had  come  to  be  considered  as 
holy,  that  is  since  about  225  a.d."  ^  The  significant  thing  is 
not  that  the  Christian  churches  should  have  given  servants  to 
their  bishops  and  elders  or  attendants  to  their  buildings  for 
public  worship,  but  that  these  officials  should  be  classed  among 
the  clergy.  It  is  this  that  was  taken  over  from  the  pagan  state 
religion. 

The  Church,  however,  did  not  copy  its  pagan  models  slavishly. 
It  broke  the  pagan  rule  that  the  higher  ministry  was  to  be 
reserved  for  men  of  a  certain  rank,  and  that  there  was  a  social 
gulf  between  the  acting  and  the  serving  priesthood.  It  made 
those  lower  orders  the  recruiting  ground  for  the  liigher,  and  in  this 
way  constructed  a  ladder  by  which  deserving  men  could  climb 
from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  ranks  of  service  within  the  Church 
of  Christ. 

Thus  the  ministry  of  the  Church  of  the  fourth  century  had 
become  so  closely  fashioned  after  the  organization  of  the  im- 
perial state  religion  that  when  the  time  of  the  Church's  triumph 
came,  which  it  did  early  in  the  century,  very  little  change  of 
previous  state  arrangements  was  needed  to  instal  the  new 
religion  in  the  place  of  the  old.  The  influences  of  religion  on  the 
state,  and  the  support  given  by  the  state  to  religious  rulers  and 
teachers,  acted  through  an  administration  which,  so  far  as 
external  organization  was  concerned,  was  surprisingly  like  the  one 
that  had  gone  before — only  now  the  cisterns  stored  and  the  con- 
duits distributed  a  wholesome  water.  The  gradations  in  the 
hierarchy,  the  times  and  places  of  its  synods,  the  additions  to 
its  lower  ministry,  were  all  borrowed  from  the  methods  of  the 
old  imperial  paganism. 

This  need  not  be  a  matter  of  reproach.  The  Church  and 
its  leaders  had  a  lofty  aim  before  them  in  all  these  changes  ;  and 
the  evangelical  life  could  be  and  was  sustained  under  this  com- 

^  Harnack,  Sources  oj  the  Apostolic  Canons,  p.  88. 


ON  THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHURCH   357 

plicated  ministry.  The  Church  acquired  an  external  polity 
which  gave  it  not  merely  such  a  sense  of  unity  as  it  had  not 
previously  possessed,  but  also  endowed  it  with  the  power  of 
acting  as  one  great  organization  in  its  work  of  Christianizing 
the  Roman  Empire  and  the  cultivated  paganism  which  died 
hard.  The_Church  undoubtedly  lost  its  old  democratic  ideals  ; 
the  laity^ counted  for  little  and  the  clergy^or_jnuch  ;  but  the 
tunes  were  becoming  less  and  less  democratic,  and  the  principles 
of  democratic  government  were  scarcely  understood  unless  when 
applied  within  very  small  areas.  In  the  centuries  which  came 
long  afterwards  it  can  be  seen  how  this  centralized  government 
helped  to  preserve  the  Church  in  the  dissolution  of  the  empire 
in  the  West  in  those  times  which  are  called  "  The  Wandering 
of  the  Nations."  On  the  other  hand,  there  were  evils.  The 
spirit  of  compromise  with  paganism,  which  this  imitation  even 
of  the  externals  of  a  pagan  religious  administration  could  scarcely 
fail  to  produce,  did  lead  to  much  corruption  both  in  the  beliefs 
and  in  the  life  of  the  Christian  Church.  These  need  not  be  here 
dwelt  upon.  The  evangelical  life  in  the  Church  was  strong 
enough  to  enable  her  to  conquer  for  the  Christian  faith,  not 
merely  persecuting  Rome,  but  the  barbarian  nations  which 
overthrew  the  western  portion  of  the  empire.  That  only  need 
be  remembered  now. 

It  is  enough  to  say  that  the  chief  seeds  of  evil  which  lay  in 
this  new  organization  of  the  Church  which  had  assumed  a  de- 
finite form  by  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century,  were  the 
two  pagan  ideas  introduced  mainly  by  Cyprian  of  Carthage  : 
(1)  that  of  a  special  priesthood,  in  the  sense  that  a  man  (the 
bishop)  could,  by  reason  of  the  power  ascribed  to  him  of  for- 
giving sin,  and,  flowing  from  that,  the  right  claimed  for  him  of 
exacting  imphcit  obedience,  stand  practically  in  the  place  of 
God  towards  his  fellow-men ;  and  (2)  that  of  a  sacrifice^  in  the 
Eucharist,  unique  in  kind,  propitiatory,  differing  essentially 
from  all  other  acts  of  worship  that  imply  self-surrender  to 
God  and  from  all  services  of  self-denying  love,  and  possessing 


358  THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

an  efficacy  independent  of  the  faith  and  the  piety  of  the 
worshippers.  It  was  these  thoughts,  not  the  organization  which 
enclosed  them,  which  were  to  breed  evil  more  abundantly  as  the 
centuries  passed. 

A  study  at  first  hand  of  the  contemporary  evidence  belonging 
to  the  first  three  centuries — and  this  has  been  accumulating 
wonderfully  during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century — reveals  the 
important  fact  that  changes  were  being  continually  made. 
Almost  every  ancient  document  as  it  unexpectedly  appears, 
rescued  from  nooks  in  eastern  convent  libraries,  dug  out  of 
Egyptian  sands,  unrolled  from  bundles  of  forgotten  parchments, 
tells  us  something  new  about  the  organization  of  the  early 
churches.  The  unvarying  lesson  they  teach  is,  that  there  was 
anything  but  a  monotonous  uniformity  in  the  ecclesiastical 
organization  of  the  churches  of  the  early  centuries.  They  all 
speak  of  changes,  experiments,  inventions  in  administration  made 
by  men  who  were  alive  to  the  needs  of  their  times  and  who  were 
unfettered  by  the  notion  that  there  is  only  one  form  of  govern- 
ment possible  to  the  Church  of  Christ  and  essential  to  its  very 
existence  as  a  Church.  The  changes  made  from  half- century 
to  half- century,  and  in  different  parts  of  the  Church  contem- 
poraneously, are  all  multiplied  proofs  that  it  belongs  to  the 
Church  to  create,  to  modify,  to  change  its  ministry  from  age  to 
age  in  order  to  make  it  as  effective  an  instrument  as  possible  for 
evangelising  the  world.  They  teach,  in  short,  that  it  is  the 
Church  that  makes  the  ministry  and  not  the  ministry  that 
makes  the  Church. 

The  close  of  the  third  century  is  the  limit  of  our  period  ; 
it  saw  the  last  stage  in  the  growth  of  the  Church  before  it  became 
absorbed  within  the  administration  of  the  Roman  empire. 

But  the  use  of  the  word  Church  is  very  misleading.  There 
was  no  one  all-embracing  institution,  visible  to  the  eye,  which 
could  be  called  the  Church  of  Christ.  What  did  exist  was  thou- 
sands of  churches,  more  or  less  independent,  associated  in  groups 
according  to  the  divisions  of  the  empire.     The  real  bond  of 


ON  THE  ORGANIZATION  OF   THE  CHURCH      369 

association  was  the  willingness  of  the  leaders  of  the  individual 
Christian  communities  to  consent  to  federation,  for  the  terms 
of  communion  were  never  exactly  settled.  The  federation  was 
constantly  Hable  to  be  dissolved.  Wlien  the  party  in  Rome 
which  favoured  a  stricter  dealing  with  the  lapsed  formed  a 
second  and  rival  congregation  and  placed  Novatian  at  the  head 
of  it  as  bishop,  he  and  not  Cornehus  was  in  communion  with 
many  of  the  Eastern  bishops  and  their  churches.  It  was  only 
the  magnanimity  of  Cyprian  which  prevented  the  breaking  up 
of  the  federation  on  the  question  of  the  re-baptism  of  heretics. 
Hundreds  of  the  associated  churches  broke  away  from  the  con- 
federation in  what  was  commonly  called  the  Donatist  schism. 
Church  is  therefore  scarcely  the  word  to  use  ;  associated  churches 
is  the  really  accurate  phrase. 

It  should  also  be  remembered  that  according  to  the  view 
of  Cyprian  every  bishop  occupied  a  thoroughly  independent 
position,  and  could  accept  or  reject  the  conditions  of  federation 
and  decline  to  be  bound  by  the  action  of  the  associated  churches. 
Examples  of  such  bishops  are  to  be  met  with  very  late.^  But  be- 
sides such  sporadic  cases,  there  were  rival  associations  of  churches 
outside  what  historians  misleadingly  call  the  Catholic  Church  of 
Christ.  In  some  parts  of  the  empire  they  were  more  numerous 
than  the  Catholics,  and  everywhere  they  were,  to  say  the  least 
of  it,  as  sincere  and  as  whole-hearted  Christians.  Marcionites, 
Montanists,  and  many  others,  lived,  worked  and  taught,  follow- 
ing the  precepts  of  Jesus  in  the  way  they  understood  them,  and 
suffered  for  Christ  in  times  of  persecution  as  faithfully  as  those 
who  called  them  heretics  and  schismatics.  The  state  of  matters 
was  much  liker  what  exists  in  a  modern  divided  Christendom 
than  many  would  have  us  believe. 

It  is  very  doubtful  whether  the  great  body  of  associated 
churches  would  of  itself  have  been  able  to  overcome  these  non- 
conformists of  the  early  centuries  and  stand  forward  as  the  one 

^  Compare  article  AiUcephaloi  in  the  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities, 
and  Hatch,  The  Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches  (1881),  p.  180. 


360  THE  ROMAN  STATE  RELIGION  AND  ITS  EFFECTS 

Christian  Church,  including  all  or  all  but  a  very  few  Christian 
communities.  That  this  state  of  things  did  actually  come  to 
pass  was  due  to  the  constraints  and  persecutions  of  the  imperial 
government,  which  never  tolerated  these  Christians,  and  whose 
persecution  was  almost  continuous  after  the  Council  of  Nicea 
till  the  dissolution  of  the  empire.  It  was  the  State  which  first 
gave  a  thoroughly  visible  unity  to  the  associated  churches. 
The  imperial  unity  was  the  forerunner  of  the  Papal.  The  State 
supported  the  associated  churches  by  all  the  means  in  its  power. 
It  recognized  the  decisions  of  their  councils  and  enforced  them 
with  civil  pains  and  penalties  ;  it  also  recognized  the  sentences 
of  deposition  and  excommunication  passed  on  members  of  the 
clergy  or  laity  belonging  to  any  one  of  the  associated  churches 
and  followed  them  with  civil  disabilities.^  It  did  its  best  to 
destroy  all  Christianity  outside  of  the  associated  churches,  and 
largely  succeeded.  The  rigour  of  the  state  persecution  directed 
against  Christian  nonconformists  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  cen- 
turies has  not  received  the  attention  due  to  it.  The  State 
confiscated  their  churches  and  ecclesiastical  property  (sometimes 
their  private  property  also) ;  it  prohibited  under  penalty  of 
proscription  and  death  their  meeting  for  public  worship  ;  it 
took  from  these  nonconformist  Christians  the  right  to  inherit 
or  bequeath  property  by  will ;  it  banished  their  clergy  ;  finally, 
it  made  raids  upon  them  by  its  soldiery  and  sometimes  butch- 
ered whole  communities,  as  was  the  case  with  the  Montanists 
in  Phrygia  and  with  the  Donatists  in  Africa.^  And  this  glaringly 
un-Christian  mode  of  creating  and  vindicating  the  visible  unity 
of  the  Catholic  Church  of  Christ  was  vigorously  encouraged 
by  the  leaders  of  the  associated  churches  who  had  the  recog- 
nition and  support  of  the  State.^ 


^  Compare  the  evidence  collected  from  the  imperial  codes  by  Dr.  Hatch 
in  his  Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches,  p.  176  n. 

2  Procopius,  Historia  Arcana,  11. 

3  Compare  letter  of  Ambrose  written  to  the  Emperor  Theodosius,  in  the 
name  of  the  Council  of  Aquileia  demanding  the  suppression  by  force  of 


ON  THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHURCH   361 

Safe  within  the  fold  of  the  State,  they  could  speak  of  them- 
selves as  the  one  Catholic  Church  of  Christ  outside  of  which 
there  was  no  salvation  ;  they  could  apply  to  their  own  circle 
of  churches  all  the  metaphors  and  promises  of  Old  Testament 
prophecy  and  all  the  sublime  descriptions  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians,  while  their  fellow- Christians  who  were  outside  state 
protection  were  being  exterminated.  Such  strange  methods  do 
men  think  it  right  to  use  when  they  try  in  their  haste  to  make 
clear  to  the  coarser  human  vision  the  wondrous  divine  thought 
of  the  visible  unity  of  the  Church  of  Christ ! 

non-conformist  ordinations  and  meetings  for  public  worship :   Ambrose, 
Opera,  Epist  I.  x.  (Migne's  Patr.  Lat.  xvi.  p.  940). 


Appendix 


3G3 


APPENDIX 

•Sketch  of  the  History  of  Modern  Controversy  about  the 
Office-bearers  in  the  Primitive  Christian  Churches 

THE  history  of  modern  discussions  about  the  nature  of  the 
government  and  the  office-bearers  in  the  earliest  Christian 
Churches  begins  with  Dr.  Lightfoot's  Essay  on  the  Christian  Ministry, 
published  in  1868,  in  his  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians. 
This  essay  has  been  recently  republished,  but  unfortunately  the 
valuable  dissertation  on  the  terms  bishop  and  presbyter  have  not 
been  appended  to  the  republished  essay. 

In  his  dissertation  on  the  words  bishop  and  presbyter,  Dr.  Light- 
foot  begins  by  examining  the  previous  history  of  the  words. 

EpiscojMS  in  classical  Greek  was  used  to  denote  the  Athenian 
commissioners  appointed  to  take  over  and  regulate  a  new  territorial 
acquisition,  the  inspectors  appointed  by  Indian  kings,  the  com- 
missioner appointed  by  Mithridates  to  settle  the  affairs  of  Ephesus, 
magistrates  who  regulated  the  sales  of  provisions,  certain  officers 
in  Rhodes  whose  occupation  is  unknown,  and  perhaps  the  officials 
of  a  club  or  confraternity.  In  the  Septuagint  the  word  was  used 
to  mean  inspectors  or  taskmasters,  captains  or  presidents,  the  com- 
missioners appointed  by  king  Antiochus  when  he  resolved  to  destroy 
the  Jewish  religion.  From  this  survey  Dr.  Lightfoot  argued  that 
the  primary  meaning  in  the  word  was  inspection,  and  that  it  con- 
tained two  subsidiary  thoughts,  responsibility  to  a  superior  power, 
and  the  introduction  of  a  new  order  of  things. 

Presbyter  or  elder,  both  name  and  office,  was  distinctly  Jewish, 
Dr.  Lightfoot  thought.  It  was  a  common  practice  certainly  to  call 
the  governing  body  the  aged  (senate,  gerousia,  aldermen),  but  all 
through  Jewish  history  there  are  elders  ;  these  elders  were  mainly 
civil  officials,  but  the  synagogues  of  the  Dispersion  had  religious 
elders  belonging  to  them.  It  was  not  unnatural,  therefore,  that  when 
the  Christian  synagogue  took  its  place  by  the  side  of  the  Jewish, 

365 


366  APPENDIX 

a  similar  organization  should  be  carried  over  from  the  old  dispen- 
sation into  the  new. 

These  two  names,  episcopus,  with  its  Greek,  and  elder,  with  its 
Jewish  history,  mean  in  the  primitive  Christian  Church  absolutely 
the  same  thing  ;  this  can  be  proved  from  Scriptural  and  patristic 
evidence.  The  "  elders  "  of  Ephesus  were  also  "  bishops  "  (Acts  xx. 
17,  28),  and  the  identity  of  the  names  is  shown  in  1  Peter  v.  1,  2  ; 
in  1  Tim.  iii.  1-7  and  v.  17-19  ;  and  in  Tit.  i.  5-7.  The  same 
identity  is  observed  in  the  First  Epistle  of  Clement  ('12,  41).  With 
the  beginning  of  the  second  century  a  new  phraseology  began  and 
the  words  took  their  modern  significations  ;  by  the  close  of  that 
century  the  original  meanings  seem  to  have  been  forgotten.  But 
in  the  fourth  century,  when  the  fathers  of  the  Church  began  to 
examine  the  records  of  the  primitive  times,  they  perceived  the 
original  meanings,  and  Jerome,  Chrysostom,  Pelagius,  Theodore 
of  Mopsuestia  and  Theodoret  all  recognized  the  original  identity 
of  episcopus  and  presbyter. 

The  question  then  arises,  how  it  came  to  pass  that  in  the  end  of  the 
second  century  everywhere  the  original  college  of  presbyters  or 
bishops  had  given  place  to  a  different  organization,  in  which  we  find 
ONE  president  called  generally  the  bishop,  and  frequently  the  pastor, 
and  under  him  a  college  of  elders  or  presbyters  and  a  band  of  deacons  ? 
Tins  is  the  question  which  Dr.  Lightfoot  set  himself  to  answer  in  his 
essay  on  the  Christian  Ministry.  He  first  collects  his  facts,  which 
are  these.  That  the  change  from  a  Church  government  where  the 
rulers  were  a  college  of  presbyter-bishops  to  the  type  in  which  there 
is  one  president  with  a  college  of  presbyters  under  him  is  first  ap- 
parent in  Asia  Minor.  We  get  the  information  from  Ignatius,  who 
was  himself  at  the  head  of  the  Church  in  Antioch,  and  who  gives 
us  the  name  of  two  other  presidents  in  that  region — Polycarp  at 
Smyrna  and  Onesimus  at  Ephesus.  The  change  came  later  in 
Macedonia  and  Greece  ;  for  the  Church  at  Philippi  was  ruled  by  a 
college  of  presbyter-bishops  during  the  time  of  Polycarp.  Corinth 
had  the  new  constitution  before  170,  and  from  some  various  con- 
siderations we  may  fix  the  date  of  the  introduction  of  the  new 
organization  into  Greece  about  the  time  of  Hadrian.  The  same  date 
may  be  assigned  to  the  new  organization  of  the  churches  in  Crete. 
The  early  history  of  a  single  presidency  in  the  Roman  Church  pre- 
sents a  perplexing  problem.  Neither  Clement  nor  Ignatius  allow 
us  to  see  the  presidency  of  one  man  in  the  early  Roman  Church, 
and  the  evidence  to  be  gathered  from  Hermas  is  too  uncertain  to  be 
relied  upon.  There  are  lists  of  so-called  bishops  of  Rome  from 
St.  Peter  and  Linus,  but  these  belong  at  the  earliest  to  the  end  of  the 


APPENDIX  367 

second  century,  and  the  names  they  give  may  only  be  those  of  men 
known  to  strangers  to  be  prominent  in  the  Church  of  the  Capital. 
We  know  absolutely  nothing  of  the  Church  in  Africa  before  the  time 
of  TertulUan,  but  the  institution  of  the  single  ruler  was  estabhshed 
in  strength  in  his  time.  In  Alexandria  there  is  evidence  to  show 
that  up  to  the  middle  of  the  third  century  the  bishop  was  not  only 
nominated  but  apparently  ordained  by  the  twelve  presbyters  out 
of  their  own  number.  In  Ga.ul  the  earliest  bishop  recorded  was 
Pothiuus,  the  immediate  predecessor  of  Irenaeus.  It  is  to  be 
observed,  however,  that  it  is  scarcely  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the 
three-fold  ministry  only  began  to  exist  when  we  can  prove  that  a 
"  bishop  "  is  actually  mentioned,  for  there  are  many  things  which 
witness  that  the  three-fold  ministry  was  not  regarded  as  a  novelty 
at  the  close  of  the  second  century. 

Having  stated  his  facts.  Dr.  Lightfoot  proceeded  to  construct 
a  theory  of  the  origin  of  this  three-fold  ministry,  or,  to  put  it  other- 
wise, to  give  an  explanation  how  the  two-fold  ministry  of  the  primi- 
tive Church  became  a  three-fold  ministry  in  the  tliird  century. 

He  notes  the  gradual  and  uneven  development  of  the  three-fold 
oxder.  He  accepts  the  statements  of  Jerome,  "  that  one  presbyter 
was  elected  that  he  might  be  placed  over  the  rest  as  a  remedy  against 
schism,  and  that  each  man  might  not  draw  to  himself  and  thus  break 
up  the  Church  of  Christ."  The  dissensions  between  Jew  and  Gentile, 
the  disputes  occasioned  by  the  Gnostic  teachers,  the  necessity  for 
preserving  a  united  front  in  times  of  trial  and  persecution,  were  the 
causes  for  the  gradual  change  which  gave  a  single  and  permanent 
head  to  the  college  of  presbyter-bishops  which  had  ruled  the  Chris- 
tian communities  in  the  earliest  times. 

This  statement,  facts  and  theory,  was  generally  accepted  by  all 
save  certain  Anglicans,  who  were  too  much  in  love  with  a  theory 
to  care  to  look  closely  at  historical  facts.  It  may  be  said  to  have 
represented  the  ideas  of  competent  scholars  in  England  and  in 
Germany  until  the  late  Dr.  Hatch  published  his  celebrated  Bampton 
Lectures   in   1881. 

Dr.  Hatch  was  one  of  the  most  original  and  erudite  students  of 
early  Church  History  that  England  has  produced.  These  lectures 
and  his  articles  in  the  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities,  were  the 
result  of  extensive  reading,  with  the  view  of  constructing  a  scientific 
history  of  the  beginnings  of  Canon  law — a  work  which  the  author's 
premature  death  prevented  him  from  accomplishing. 

Dr.  Hatch  set  himself  to  investigate. the  origins  of  ecclesiastical 
organization  from  a.comparative  review  of  the  political,  social  and 
religious  assemblies  and  confraternities  in  society  contemporary 


368  APPENDIX 

with  the  beginnings  of  Christianity.  He  was  not  the  first  to  do  this. 
Renan  had  directed  attention  to  the  confraternities  of  pagan  times 
and  instituted  a  parallel  between  them  and  the  organization  of  the 
early  Christian  societies.  Heinrici  had  carried  on  the  same  kind 
of  investigation  in  two  learned  articles  published  in  the  Zeitschrift 
fur  wissenschaftliche  Theologie,  in  1876-7,  and  in  his  Commentary 
on  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  published  in  1879.  But 
Dr.  Hatch  brought  to  the  work  a  wealth  of  material  more  abundant 
than  had  been  collected  by  any  of  his  predecessors,  and  grouped  it 
in  a  much  more  skilful  way.  His  idea  was  that  tlie  term  e^iscopus 
came  into  the  Christian  Church  from  the  heathen  confraternities, 
and  was  used  for  the  leaders  in  the  Gentile,  as  the  term  presbyter 
was  used  in  the  Jewish,  Christian  societies.  If  the  Gentile  Christian 
churches  are  to  be  alone  considered.  Dr.  Hatch  thought  that  the 
presbyters  whom  we  find  in  them  had  an  origin  quite  spontaneous 
and  independent  of  the  example  of  the  Jewish  communities.  He 
derived  the  Christian  presbyters  from  the  common  practice  of  a 
council  of  elderly  men  which  superintended  most  of  the  confra- 
ternities which  abounded  in  the  early  centuries  of  our  era. 

Dr.  Hatch  seems  to  have  thought  that  the  office  as  well  as  the 
name  episcopus  was  distinct  from  that  of  presbyter  from  the  be- 
ginning, but  he  did  not  make  this  opinion  very  emphatic.  His  idea 
was  that  the  episcopus  filled  an  administrative  and  financial  office, 
and  its  duties  in  both  respects  came  from  the  position  of  the  epis- 
copus as  the  leader  of  the  worship,  and  therefore  the  receiver  of  the 
"  gifts "  of  the  people,  who  gave  them  after  the  service  to  the 
officiating  minister,  by  whom  they  were  distributed  to  those  to 
whom  they  were  due.  Dr.  Hatch  thus  disputed  the  identity  of 
presbyter  and  episcopus,  at  least  in  Gentile  Christian  societies.  He 
agreed^^ith  Dr..,  Lightfoot,  however,  in  declaring  that  all  the  Chris- 
tian churches  were  originally  governed  by  a  plurality  of  office- 
bearers, none  of  whom  had  a  pre-eminence  over  his  fellows.  In 
attempting  to  account  for  the  fact  that  in  course  of  time  we  find  this 
government  by  a  plurality  of  office-bearers  of  equal  rank  superseded 
by  a  three-fold  ministry,  in  which  the  local  Church  was  governed 

^  by  one  episcopus,  a  college  of  presbyters  and  several  deacons,  Dr. 

^^  Hatch  followed  Dr.  Lightfoot's  argument.  He  adduced  the  general 
tendency  in  all  societies  to  have  a  president  at  their  head,  and  the 
natural  tendency  when  once  a  single  president  had  been  appointed 
for  power  to  grow  in  his  hands  ;  the  specific  tendency  in  the  Christian 
societies  of  the  second  century  to  believe  that  the  coming  of  the 
Lord  was  at  hand,  and  the  consequent  endeavour  to  represent  each 
society  as  having  at  its  head  one  who  would  represent  the  Lord  until 


APPENDIX  369 

He  came  ;  and  lastly  the  need  felt  in  times  of  danger,  whether  from 
persecution  or  from  speculation,  to  have  one  head  who  could  be 
obeyed  by  all.  He  declared  that  his  explanation  of  the  change  was 
exactly  that  made  by  Jerome. 

Dr.  Hatch's  Lectures,  at  once  original  and  erudite,  attracted  a 
great  deal  of  attention  both  in  this  country  and  abroad.  They  were 
the  object  of  some  grossly  unfair  and  almost  virulent  attacks  on  the 
part  of  High  Church  Anglicans,  and  these  attacks  continue.  In 
Germany  the  Lectures  made  a  very  great  impression,  all  the  more 
so  that  the  distinguished  Church  historian.  Dr.  Adolf  Harnack,  then 
a  professor  at  Giessen,  now  at  Berlin,  was  so  struck  with  the  book 
that  he  translated  it  into  German  and  published  it  with  elaborate 
notes  of  his  own.  With  this  translation  modern  German  critical 
research  into  the  organization  of  the  primitive  Church  may  be  said 
to  have  begun. 

While  Dr.  Hatch  had  denied  Dr.  Lightfoot's  starting  point,  the 
identity  of  episcopi  and  presbyters,  he  had  done  so  mainly  by  in- 
sisting on  a  difference  in  origin  and  perhaps  in  work ;  but  he  had 
not  made  very  clear  the  real  relation  between  the  episcopus  and  the 
presbyter,  nor  had  he  explained  why  it  was  that  when  the  three-fold 
ministry  emerged  the  superior  officer  was  called  episcopus  and  not 
presbyter.  Dr.  Harnack,  in  his  "  analecta "  to  his  translation 
set  himself  to  supply  these  defects.  He  insisted  in  a  much  more 
thoroughgoing  way  than  Dr.  Hatch  that  the  two  offices  of  episcopus 
and  presbyter  were  distinct  in  their  origin,  and  represented  two 
distinct  types  of  organization  which  could  never  throughout  their 
whole  history  be  completely  identified.  The  former,  along  with  the 
deacons,  were  administrative  officers,  and  had  mainly  to  do  with  the 
distribution  and  reception  of  the  offerings  of  the  worshippers,  and 
through  these  with  the  worship  of  the  congregation,  while  the 
presbyters  were  from  the  first  and  always  men  who  had  charge  of  the 
discipline  and  morals  of  their  fellow  Christians.  In  his  "  analecta," 
Dr.  Harnack  attempts  to  trace  this  clear  distinction  down  through 
sub-apostolic  literature.  This  translation  was  published  in  1883. 
In  the  same  year  appeared  the  Didache^  issued  by  Bishop  Bry- 
ennios — a  venerable  relic  from  primitive  times,  which  shed  a  light 
on  many  things  hitherto  obscure  in  primitive  Christianity.  The 
appearance  of  the  Didache  was  the  occasion  of  a  very  thorough- 
going resiftijig.of  the  earliestjiterature  bearing  on  the  organization 
and  worship  of  the  primitive  Church.  As  a  result  of  this  we  have 
now  the  completed  hypothesis  of  Dr.  Harnack  about  the  beginnings 
and  growth  of  the  Christian  organization,  which  is  as  follows.  While 
we  have  traces  of  at  least  four  separate  roots  of  organization  in  the 

CM.     ^  '"' 24 


370  APPENDIX 

primitive  Church,  which  may  be  called  the  "  religious,"  the  "  patri- 
archal," the  "  administrative  "  and  the  "  aristocratic,"  it  may  be 
said  that  a  completely  organized  congregation  possessed  at  the  end 
of  the  apostoUc  age :  (1)  "  prophets  and  teachers,"  who  were 
awakened  and  taught  by  the  Spirit,  and  who  spoke  the  "  Word  of 
God  "  ;  (2)  a  circle  of  "  presbyters  "  or  "  elders,"  select  old  men, 
but  perhaps  not  yet  elected  "  old  men,"  who  in  all  emergencies  which 
affected  the  congregation  could  guide  them,  and  whose  special  duty 
it  was  to  watch  over  the  life  and  behaviour  of  the  members  of  the 
community,  and  who  therefore  comforted,  admonished  and  punished; 
they  also  formed  the  court  of  arbiters  before  whom  all  cases  of 
dispute  between  members  of  the  Christian  society  were  brought  and 
judged  ;  (3)  the  administrative  officers — "  episcopi  "  and  deacons — 
who  possessed  the  "  gifts  "  of  government  and  public  service,  and 
who  had  to  act  especially  in  public  worship  and  in  the  care  of  the 
poor  ;  the  "  episcopi "  were  also  members  of  the  circle  of  "  presby- 
ters." But  besides  these  there  were  also  in  the  congregations  many 
varied  "  gifts  "  (1  Cor.  xii.) ;  and  each  individual  "  gift "  or  talent 
which  was  useful  to  edify,  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word,  the 
members  of  the  society,  v/as  considered  a  "  gift "  of  the  Spirit ; 
but  only  those  who  possessed  in  peculiar  measure  the  "  gift '^  of 
speaidngjbheJ*^]^ord_of  God/^_tlie_apostles,  prophets  and  teachers, 
held  a  special  raw^  in  tlie_congregation.  That  was  the  first  stage 
in  the  organization. 

The  second  stage  arose  during  the  second  century,  when  the  basis 
of  organization  was  thoroughly  altered  and  the  alteration  was  mainly 
due  to  the  gradual  dying  out  of  the  "  charismatic  "  element.  It 
shows  three  elements.  (1)  The  "  prophets  and  teachers  "  either 
gradually  died  out  or  probably  the  calling  led  to  so  many  abuses  that 
these  men  lost  their  original  pre-eminence,  and  their  places  were 
taken  by  the  "  episcopi."  (2)  The  worship  and  other  things  made 
it  more  and  more  necessary  for  one  man  to  be  at  the  head  of  the 
administration— the  "  episcopi  "  coalesced  into  one  "  episcopus  " 
or  "  pastor."  (3)  The  college  of  "  presbyters  "  lost  much  of  its 
earlier  standing  and  became  more  an  advising  college  supporting 
the  "  episcopus  "  or  "  pastor."  Thus  the  organization  became  a 
three-fold  order  of  ministry — "  episcopus"  or  "  pastor,"  presbyters 
or  "  elders,"  and  deacons — and  these  officials  formed  a  consecrated 
body  of  men  set  over  the  laity.  This  change  came  with  varying 
degrees  of  rapidity  in  the  various  parts  of  the  empire,  and  we  find 
transitional  forms.  One  of  the  most  important  parts  of  the  change 
was  that  the  duty  of  edifying  the  people  by  sermon  and  hortatory 
address  passed  for  the  most  part  to  the  "  episcopus  "  or  "  pastor," 


APPENDIX  371 

and  in  a  lesser  degree  to  the  "  elders  "  ;  but  on  into  the  third  cen- 
tury there  were,  surrounding  the  "  pastor,' '  laymen  who  not,  me^ly 
edified  the  congregation  by  exhortations,  but  who  instructed  it 
in  the  faith.  Such  gifted  individuals,  along  with  members  who  bore 
eminent  testimony  to  the  faith_in_£eraliaT_lioliness  of  life  or  in 
suffering,  such  as  the  confessors,  virgins  and  widows,  held  a  place 
of  special  honour  within  the  congregation  alongside  of  the  clergy. 

TIlc  first  half  of  the  third  century  saw  the  final  form  of  organization 
adopted,  and  it  is  characterized  by  attributing  a  sacerdotal  character 
to  the  clergy,  who  had  this  character  fixed  upon  them  by  a  solemn 
service,  by  a  comprehensive  adoption  of  the  compUcated  forms  of 
heathen  worship,  of  the  temple  service,  and  of  the  priesthood,  with 
a  corresponding  idea  of  the  magical  power  of  priestly  actions,  by 
strictly  and  thoroughly  including  within  the  clerical  order  every- 
thing of  ancient  dignity  and  rule,  and  by  the  complete  extinction 
of  the  old  "  charismatic  "  gifts  of  edification,  or  their  relegation  to  a 
very  subordinate  place. 

These  views  of  Dr.  Harnack  will  be  found  stated  at  length  with 
his  proofs  in  his  second  volume  of  the  Didache,  in  his  Sources  of  the 
Apostolic  Canons  {Texte  und  Untersuchungen,  II.  i.  ii,  v.),  and  in  an 
article  contributed  to  the  Expositor,  1887,  January-June,  p.  321. 
In  the  same  number,  on  pp.  1  and  97,  will  be  found  two  articles 
by  Dr.  Sanday  summarizing  and  criticising  Dr.  Harnack's  posi- 
tions. 

Dr.  Harnack's  theory  was  at  once  adopted  by  many  distinguished 
students  of  early  Church  History  in  Germany,  such  as  Weizsacker 
and  Sohm,  and  has  been  assented  to  by  many  Americans,  such  as 
Dr.  Allen  in  his  Christian  Institutions  (1898) ;  but  it  has  also  met 
with  a  good  deal  of  opposition.  The  hypothesis  is  marked  by  all 
Dr.  Harnack's  originality  of  view,  and  is  illustrated  by  a  wealth  of 
references  which  perhaps  he  alone  could  give.  It  fascinated  me  at 
first,  and  it  was  only  after  reading  and  re-readings  the  evidence  that 
I  was  obliged  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  rt^was  untenable.  Its 
leading  opponents  are  SeyerTen  {Zeitschrift  ji'ir  prahtische  Theologie, 
1887,  pp.  97  ff.  201  ff.,  297  ff.),  Looning,  Loofs  and  lastly  Schmiedel. 

Dr.  Loening  {Die  Gemeindeverfassung  des  Urchristenthums,  1889) 
is  Professor  of  Law  in  the  University  of  Halle,  and  the  author  of  a 
valuable  work  on  Church  Law.  He  has  a  lawyer's  demand  for  exact 
evidence  and  a  lawyer's  love  of  precedents.  He  holds  that  there 
was  little  or  no  organization_m_the^  Christiaji  communities  during 
strictly  apostolic  times.  ^     What  we  find  are  little  societies  of  Chris- 

^  Dr.  Loening  belongs  to  that  school  of  New  Testament  critics  who  are 


372  APPENDIX 

tians  meeting  and  worshipping  together  in  house  churches  ;  we  see 
no  traces  of  office-bearers  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word  ;  we  have 
various  terms  applied  to  men  because  of  the  work  they  do,  but  no 
word  of  office.     In  the  last  genuine  Epistle  of  St.  Paul,  that  written 
to  the  Philippians,  we  meet  for  the  first  time  with  real  office-bearers 
who  are  called  "  bishops  and  deacons."     This  epistle  and  these  names 
must  be  the  starting  point  of  investigation  into  the  origins  of  primi- 
tive Christian  organization.     After  a  rapid  criticism  of  the  state- 
ments of  Dr.  Hatch  and  Professor  Harnack,  he  comes  to  the  con- 
clusion that  no  real  proof  has  been  brought  forward  to  enable  us  to 
explain  these  names  from  the  titles  of  the  officials  of  heathen  confra- 
ternities ;  as  little  have  they  any  connexion  with  the  organization 
of  the  synagogue.     We  can  learn  nothing  about   "  bishops  and 
deacons  "  save  from  the  ordinary  uses  of  the  Greek  words  and  their 
special  use  in  Christian  literature.     It  would  almost  seem,  thinks 
Dr.  Loening,  that  the  Apostle  Paul  used  these  special  words  to  show 
that  the  organization  of  the  Christian  societies  founded  by  him 
had  no  connection  with  Judaism  on  the  one  hand,  nor  with  heathen- 
ism on  the  other.     When  we  examine  patristic  and  sub-apostolic 
literature  there  is  a  much  closer  connexion  between  the  function 
of  teaching  and  these  office-bearers  than  Harnack  allows ;  indeed, 
Dr.  Loening  is  inclined  to  question  Dr.  Harnack's  opinion  that  the 
"  bishops  and  deacons  "  of  the  Didache  were  the  officials  who  had 
specially  to  do  with  the  worship  as  distinct  from  the  instruction. 
He  finds  that  the  Poimenes  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians,  the 
Hegoumenoi  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  the  Episcopi  of  the 
Didache,  meant  the  same  kind  of  officials,  and  that  there  was  a 

furthest  removed  from  the  traditional  ideas  about  the  date  and  author- 
ahip  of  the  New  Testament  writings.  He  does  not  believe  that  we  can 
accept  the  account  given  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  as  trustworthy  history 
for  apostolic  times.  Therefore  while  he  accepts  the  account  of  the  election 
and  setting  apart  of  the  Seven,  he  refuses  to  admit  that  Paul  and  Barnabas 
saw  "  presbyters  "  appointed  in  the  Churches  founded  during  their  first 
mission  journey,  and  to  accept  the  fact  of  the  existence  of  "presbyters" 
in  the  primitive  Christian  Church  in  Jerusalem.  He  holds  that  Rom.  xvi. 
3-15  is  not  part  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  but  a  letter  to  the  Church 
at  Ephesus,  and  to  be  taken  as  evidence  for  the  organization  of  the  Churches 
in  further  Asia  and  in  Greece.  He  does  not  believe  in  the  Pauline  origin 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians  or  of  the  Pastoral  Epistles.  He  dates  the 
former  at  70-90  a.d.  and  the  latter  at  sometime  during  the  first  quarter 
of  the  second  century;  while  he  relegates  the  date  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles 
to  the  beginning  of  the  second  century.  He  makes  up  for  this  incredulity 
by  accepting  with  unquestioning  faith  the  gossip  of  Hegesippus  and  such 
writers. 


APPENDIX  373 

close  union  between  teaching  and  oversight  in  the  last  quarter  of  the 
first  century.  But  what  of  the  "  presbyters"  ?  Dr.  Loening 
asserts  strongly  that  the  "  presbyters "  in  the  Gentile  Christian 
communities  had  no  connexion  whatever  with  officials  in  Greek 
city  Hfe,  social  or  political.  The  name  comes  from  Judaism ;  but 
the  Christian  presbyters  have  nothing  in  common  with  the  Jewish 
presbyters  but  the  name.  Although  he  does  not  accept  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles  as  a  testimony  for  the  organization  of  the  churches 
in  the  earliest  days  of  Christianity,  yet  it  is  a  trustworthy  witness 
for  the  organization  which  prevailed  in  the  beginning  of  the  second 
century.  That  book,  the  First  Epistle  of  St.  Peter,  and  the  Apo- 
calypse, all  show  that  there  were  "  presbyters "  in  the  Gentile 
Christian  communities  in  Palestine,  in  Syria,  and  in  Asia  Minor,  and 
that  that  office  had  been  established  in  these  parts  for  some  time. 
Where  did  it  come  from  ?  From  Judaism,  says  Dr.  Loening  ;  and 
his  proof  is  that  it,  he  thinks,  brought  with  it  "  ordination,"  which 
was  a  distinctly  Jewish  institution.  He  finds  this  in  the  Pastoral 
Epistles,  and  further  declares  that  in  these  epistles  we  see  the 
Jewish  term  "  presbyter  "  and  the  Gentile  term  "  bishop  "  apphed 
to  one  and  the  same  set  of  office-bearers.  Thus  Dr.  Loening  arrives 
at  the  conclusion  of  the  identity  of  "  presbyter  "  and  "  episcopus," 
with  which  Dr.  Lightfoot  started.  But  he  has  a  difficulty  to  en- 
counter from  his  rejection  of  the  authority  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 
and  from  his  placing  the  Pastoral  Epistles  at  such  a  late  date.  Dr. 
Harnack  had  said,  standing  on  the  same  critical  ground  as  Dr.  Loen- 
ing, that  if  the  Gentile  Christian  organization  had  taken  elders 
from  the  Jewish,  these  officials  would  surely  have  appeared  earlier 
than  the  last  years  of  the  first  century,  which  is  the  earUest  date 
which  the  critical  theories  about  certain  New  Testament  writings 
permit.  Dr.  Loening  gets  round  this  objection  by  supposing,  on  the 
authority,  or  at  least  on  what  he  calls  the  authority,  of  Hegesippus, 
that  there  was  no  organization  at  all  in  Jewish  Christian  com- 
munities until  after  the  death  of  James,  and  that  the  Jewish  Christian 
Church  was  first  thoroughly  detached  from  Judaism  and  furnished 
with  an  organization  of  its  own  when  Symeon  became  its  head. 
His  refusal  to  accept  the  trustworthiness  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 
and  his  full  credence  of  all  the  gossip  of  Hegesippus,  justifies  Loofs' 
sarcasm  that  Loening  is  an  ideal  "  modern  critic,"  because  the  only 
sources  of  information  that  are  not  to  be  accepted  uncritically  are 
the  canonical  Scriptures.  Coming  to  the  question  of  how  the  single 
president  of  a  Church  emerged  from  the  college  of  "  presbyter- 
bishops,"  Dr.  Loening  has  a  theory  which  is  all  his  own.  The  thick 
veil  which  covers  the  change  from  the  two-fold  to  the  three-fold 


374  APPENDIX 

order  of  the  mimstry  can  be  lifted,  he  thinks,  by  the  aid  of  the 
Epistles  of  Ignatius.  With  these  to  guide  us  we  can  gather  that 
while  in  Rome  and  Macedonia  there  was  still  a  collegiate  constitu- 
tion, there  was  in  Antioch  and  Asia  Minor  a  three-fold  ministry  ; 
but  the  "  bishop  "  was  not  considered  a  successor  of  the  apostles 
but  a  representative  of  Jesus  Christ  and  of  God.  The  change  did 
not  come  from  the  colleges  of  "  presbyter-bishops  "  taking  to  them- 
selves a  permanent  president,  for  there  is  no  evidence  of  any  such 
movement,  nor  did  it  follow  any  analogy  of  heathen  gilds  or  civic 
constitutions,  for  no  such  analogies  present  themselves.  It  came 
from  an  imitation  of  the  position  of  Symeon  at  the  head  of  the  Jewish- 
Christian  community  at  Pella.  Symeon,  of  the  natural  family 
line  of  our  Lord,  was  the  representative  of  Jesus  ;  and  Ignatius  got 
the  "  ecclesiastical  precedent "  required  there,  and  that  is  why  he 
considers  the  "  bishop  "  or  permanent  president  of  the  college  of 
"  presbyter-bishops "  the  successor  of  the  Lord.  Ignatius  seized 
on  this  idea,  and  his  enthusiastic  support  of  it  made  the  conception 
widely  known.  Besides,  it  was  useful  in  the  circumstances  of  the 
second  century,  and  so  the  practice  spread  throughout  the  Church. 
Only  the  main  thought  of  Ignatius — that  the  permanent  president 
represented  Christ — was  departed  from,  and  the  "  bishop  "  was 
looked  upon  as  the  successor  of  the  apostles.  Then  came  Cyprian 
with  his  sacerdotal  ideas,  and  the  simple  president  changed  into  the 
hierarchical  bishop  through  the  idea  of  an  ordination  which  gave  a 
"  charismatic  "  character  to  an  office  held  for  life. 

The  theory  of  Professor.Loois.of^Halle  is  given  in  an  elaborate 
article  published  in  the  Studien  und  Krifil-en  for  1890  (pp.  019-658). 
Professor  Loofs  is  the  most  distinguished  of  the  younger  Church 
historians  of  Germany,  and  is  an  eminently  sane  and  scientific 
worker  and  thinker. 

Professor  Loofs  agrees  with  all  our  authorities  that  there  was  in 
apostolic  and  in  sub-apostolic  times  a  "  charismatic  ministry " 
of  "  apostles,  prophets  and  teachers,"  and  that  they  were  in  no  sense 
the  office-bearers  in  local  Churches  ;  but  he  thinks  that  some  autho- 
rities have  drawn  too  hard  and  fast  a  line  between  the  two  classes 
of  ministry.  As  to  the  office-bearers  in  local  Churches,  the  contro- 
versy concerns  these  points  :  Whence  comes  the  name  "  episcopus," 
and  what  were  the  original  functions  of  the  men  so  called  ?  What 
was  the  origin  of  the  "  presbyteri,"  and  what  was  their  relation 
to  the  "  episcopi "  ?  At  what  time  did  the  guidance  of  the  com- 
munity fall  into  the  hands  of  one  episcopus,  and  how  did  it  come 
about  ?     These  questions  exhaust  the  points  in  dispute. 

He  has  not  much  belief  in  the  relation  of  the  name  "  episcopus  " 


APPENDIX  375 

to  the  officials  of  heathen  confraternities  or  to  civil  officials  ;  the 
references  given  by  Dr.  Hatch  and  Dr.  Harnack  do  not  prove  their 
contention.  He  does  not  think  that  the  word  is  a  direct  term  of 
distinct  office  in  the  New  Testament  writings  any  more  than  poimen 
(pastor)  or  hegounienos  ;  in  the  address  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Philip- 
pians  episcopi  are  merely  those  members  of  the  brethren  who  take 
an  active  oversight,  and  diakoni  are  those  who  render  active  assist- 
ance. When  we  get  beyond  the  New  Testament  v/ritings  and  come 
to  the  Didache,  the  episcojn  are  undoubtedly  the  officials  of  the  con- 
gregation who  preside  over  the  pubhc  worship,  but  the  question  is 
whether  they  did  tliis  and  nothing  else,  and  whether  this  was  their 
original  work.  He  thinks  that  they  were  more  than  merely  the  presi- 
ding officers  at  pubUc  worship  and  what  that  included,  for  they  are 
continually  called  poimenes,  and  "  to  shepherd  "  surely  means  more 
than  to  preside  at  worsliip  and  distribute  the  offerings  ?  And  he  is  of 
opinion  that  originally  they  were  simply  proMstamenoi,  and  gradu- 
ally became  the  presidents  of  the  public  worship.  It  is  difficult  to 
say  whether  they  taught,  but  1  Thess.  v.  12  seems  to  imply  that 
teaching  was  from  the  first  associated  with  leading  the  congregation. 
Then  as  to  the  "  presbyters  "—excluding  for  the  sake  of  argument 
the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  the  Apocalypse  and  the  Epistle  of  James— 
the  first  fairly  debatable  places  where  they  are  mentioned  are  in  the 
First  Epistle  of  St.  Peter  and  the  First  Epistle  of  Clement.  The 
presbyters  or  elders  mentioned  in  these  epistles  are  undoubtedly 
office-bearers  ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  prove  that  the  "  presbyters  " 
in  the  Gentile  Christian  Churches  were  not  the  same  as  in,  and  taken 
from,  the  Jewish  Christian  Churches,  unless  it  can  be  shown  that  the 
office  they  held  in  the  one  was  different  from  what  they  held  in  the 
other,  or  that  there  was  a  period  when  there  were  no  "  presbyters  " 
in  the  Gentile  Churches,  and  to  prove  this  more  is  needed  than  the 
argument  of  silence  from  St.  Paul's  epistles.  If  "presbyters " 
were, in  Gentile  Christian  Churches  then  they  were  exactly  the  same 
as  "  episcopi  "  ;  and  "  presbyter  "  is  the  name  of  the  office,  while 
"  episcopus "  tells  us  that  this  official  exercised  the  function  of 
"  oversight."  This  can  be  proved  without  reference  to  the  presence 
of  the  word  "  presbyter  "  in  writings  disputed  on  critical  grounds. 
The  testimony  of  Jerome  is  not  to  be  set  aside  lightly  ;  it  is  un- 
questionable that  Clement  calls  "episcopi"  "presbyters"  ;  even  if 
the  word  "  episkopountes  "  be  rejected  in  1  Peter  v.  2,  "  presbyters  " 
are  called  "  pastors  "  in  that  epistle,  and  "  pastor  "  is  a  common 
equivalent  for  "  episcopus  "  ;  the  "  presbyters  "  of  Ephesus  are  called 
"  episcopi  "  (Acts  xx.  17,  28),  and  this  evidence  is  quite  independent 
of  the  date  or  historicity  of  the  book  ;  and  there  is  finally  the  witness 


376  APPENDIX 

of  TertuUian  (Apol.  39)  and  of  Irenaeus.  All  tliis  is  much  stronger 
evidence  for  the  identity  of  the  words  than  anything  that  Hatch  or 
Harnack  has  brought  forward  against  the  conception.  But  this 
does  not  settle  the  question  whether  the  "  presbyter "  and  the 
"  episcopus  "  were  identical  from  the  first,  or  when  the  term  came 
"  presbyter  "  into  the  Christian  organization.  All  the  probabilities 
are  that  it  came  from  the  Jewish  Church  ;  Christianity  came  out  of 
Judaism,  and  that  gives  an  antecedent  probability.  This  does 
not  mean  that  they  got  the  word  from  Palestine  ;  Jewish  synagogues 
abounded  all  throughout  the  Roman  Empire,  and  converts  must  have 
come  from  them  into  the  Christian  Churches.  But  there^is  no  need 
to  suppose  that  all  Christian  congregations  got  hold  of  the  word 
in  the  same  way  ;  some  may  have  got  it  from  others,  and  some  may 
have  taken  the  idea  and  the  function  from  the  civil  and  social 
organizations  around  them ;  we  need  not  suppose  any  monotonous 
uniformity  of  derivation.  At  all  events,  the  word  and  the  function 
were  within  the  Christian  congregations,  and  if  St.  Paul  says  nothing 
about  "  presbyters,"  he  recognizes  "  prohistamenoi,"  who  were  much 
the  same.  But  of  course  it  is  quite  unnecessary  to  suppose  that 
the  organization  of  Christian  congregations  took  from  the  very 
first  the  form  it  afterwards  assumed  in  apostolic  and  post-apostolic 
times.  There  is  a  growth  which  takes  time.  It  is  much  more 
credible  to  believe  that  the  terms  "  presbyteri,"  "  prohistamenoi " 
and  "  episcopi  "  all  mean  the  same  thing  than  to  accej^t  any  of  the 
more  recent  reconstructions.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  Professor 
Loofs  reaches  exactly  the  same  position  as  Dr.  Lightfoot.  In  all 
that  has  been  gaid,  it  is  presupposed  that  there  was  at  the  head  of 
each  local  Church  a  number  of  "  presbyter-bishops,"  and  the  next 
question  is.  How  did  the  three-fold  ministry  arise  ?  Dr.  Loofs 
answers  that  we  really  do  not  know.  We  are  in  absolute  ignorance 
about  two  things  which  might  give  us  hght  on  the  question  if  we 
could  learn  something  about  them — the  relation  of  the  "  House 
Churches  "  to  the  body  of  Christians  in  the  town  to  which  they 
belonged,  and  what  provision  was  made  for  the  instruction  of  candi- 
dates for  baptism,  and  by  whom  this  instruction  was  given.  But 
while  we  can  give  no  certain  answer  to  the  question,  something  can 
be  said  both  negatively  and  positively.  We  can  say  negatively 
that  the  change  from  the  one  to  the  other  did  not  come  by  any 
sudden  alteration  which  gave  rise  to  contentions  ;  there  is  no  word 
of  such  contention  in  the  whole  round  of  primitive  Christian  litera- 
ture ;  the  change  came  naturally,  so  naturally  as  to  make  it  seem 
that  there  was  no  change.  We  can  say  positively  that  there  is 
great  likehhood  that  the  channel  of  the  change  was  the  relation  of  the 


APPENDIX  377 

officials  to  the  conduct  of  public  worship,  and  more  especially  in  their 
relation  to  the  Eucharist, ,  What  happened  there  while  a  college  of 
"presbyter-bishops  "  was^  at  the  head  of  the  congregation  we  do 
not  know  ;  but  it  is  manifest  that  there  could  not  be  a  collegiate 
superintendence  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  Did  the  "  presbyter- 
bishops  "  take  it  in  turn  to  officiate,  or  was  one  of  their  number 
appointed  to  undertake  this  service  usually  ?  We  do  not  know. 
But  it  did  become  the  duty  of  one  man  to  superintend  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  Eucharist ;  we  see  this  in  Justin  Martyr ;  and 
the  man  whom  Justin  calls  the  TrpoecrTcb?  is  plainly  the_iore- 
runner  ofthe  single  episcopus.  This,  however,  is  not  all  that  is 
needed  to  account  for  the  change  which  did  come  about ;  and  prob- 
ably something  has  yet  to  be  done  in  the  line  of  following  up 
Harnack's  idea  that  the  single  president  was  supposed  to  inherit 
the  spiritual  gifts  of  the  charismatic  ministry.  Once,  however,  the 
single  bishop  became  the  rule,  the  growth  and  the  importance  of  the 
higher  order  can  easily  be  traced. 

The  theory  of  Professor  Schmiedel  on  the  origin  and  growth  of  the 
ministry  in  the  primitive  Christian  congregations  is  to  be  found 
in  the  article  on  Ministry  in  the  Encyclopedia  Biblica.  It  is  easily 
accessible.  I  have  recently  described  and  criticised  it  in  an  article 
contributed  to  the  first  number  of  the  Hihbert  Journal.  It  may  be 
sufficient  to  say  that  the  whole  of  the  recent  discussions  in  Germany 
on  the  origin  of  the  Christian  Ministry  are  condensed  in  the  article. 

The  article  Church,  contributed  by  the  Rev.  S.  C.  Gayford  to 
Hastings'  Bible  Dictionary,  is  one  of  exceptional  interest.  It  is  a 
very  exhaustive  account  of  the  Churches  of  the  New  Testament, 
based  on  a  searching  analysis  of  the  documents  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. Unfortunately  the  author  confines  himself  almost  exclusively 
to  the  canonical  writings.  The  article  is  marked  by  two  things  which 
are  treated  in  a  fresh  clear  way — a  description  of  the  gradual  growth 
of  organization  to  be  seen  v/ithin  the  Churches  during  apostolic  times, 
and  a  clear  account  of  the  prophetic  ministry.  The  article  is  in 
every  way  worthy  of  attention  and  of  study. 


INDEX    OF    REFERENCES^ 

To  Contemporary  Authorities  Canonical 
and    Non-canonical 


Josephus.  VI.  :    1.  56  ;  4.  10  ;   5.  46,  57,  176 

AntiquitatesIV.  viii.  14,  38.  .117  9.  12,  50,  80  ;   16.  46 

XIV.  X.  8         .  .132  VII.  :    1.  55  ;    6.  88,  104  ;    7.  63  ; 

XV.  X.  3          . .     3  10.   87,   88,    89,    104 ;     12.    87  ; 
Bell.  Jud.     I.   xxi.    3         ..3  17.  10,  12  ;  25.  87,  88,  104  ;   31. 

II.  XX.    5          ..117  50;  40.  87,  88 
VIII.  :    10.  50 

1  Thessalonians     (circa     48-52  jx.  .    i.  gO,  82,  84  ;   2.  82,  83,  88  ; 

^•^•)  5.  79,  81,  98  ;   6.  79  ;   8-13.  46  ; 

I.  :    1.  10,  11,  80  ;  6.  SO.  13.  73  ;    14.  73,  98  ;   24-27.  50 
II.:   6.88;    14.10,11.  X.:    1-4.55;    14-22.64;    15.71, 

III.  :    2.  62,  143  100  ;   32.  10,  18,  22 

IV.  :    1.  87  ;   9-11.  21  ;    10.  22  XI.  :    1.  89  ;  2.  12,  84  ;  5.  98  ;    13. 

V.  :  12.  60,  72,  123,  150,  216  ;  13.  71,  100  ;  16.  10,  48  ;  18.  10,  55  ; 
60,  123  ;  14.  60,96, 150;  20.  91,  20.  51  ;  21.  51  ;  22.  18,  51  ;  23. 
93  ;   21.  71,  100.  12,  16,  104  ;    23-27.  16  ;    30-32. 

51 

2  Thessalonians      (circa     48-52  xn  •    8     58  •    1-4     71     100  •    3 

^•^•)  44,  94,   102  ;    4.  49  ;    4-11.  63  ; 

I.:    1.  10;   4.  10  5.   62;    8.  46;    10.  47,  71,  100; 

II.  :    15.  104  13.  22  ;    27.  14  ;    28-31.  63  ;    28. 

18,  60,  61,  74,  93,  103,  149,  165. 
1    Corinthians   (circa  53-55  a.d.)      ^III.  :     Wliole    Chapter,    58;    2. 

I.  :     1.    84  ;    2.    7,    10 ;     11.    50 ;  104 

12.  12;    13.  12;    14.  50;   26.  50      XIV.:    1.  93;    2.  47,  104;    4.  10, 

II.  :  6.  104  ;  7.  46  ;  14.  71  ;  15.  69    47  ;  5.  66,  93  ;  6.  94  ;  7.  47  ;  8. 

III.  :  1.  69  ;  3-9.  113  ;  5.  62  ;  47  ;  10.  47  ;  11.  47  ;  12.  10  ;  13. 

IV.  :  9.  50,  80 ;  13-21.  89  ;  14.  47  ;  14.  47  ;  15.  48  ;  16.  44  ;  19. 
89  ;  16.  87,  89  ;  17.  10,  12,  87 ;  10,  55  ;  21.  46  ;  23.  10  ;  25.  47, 
21.  89  95  ;  26.  45,  48,  94,  104,  110  ;  27. 

V.  :  1-8.  55,  96 ;  1-13.  89 ;  3.  87  ;  47  ;  28.  47  ;  29-33.  48,  93  ;  30. 
3-5.  33  46,  94  ;  31.  46  ;  32.  91,  94  ;  33. 

1  Arabic  numerals  followed  by  a  full  stop  (21.)  denote  the  verses  or  small  sections 
of  the  books  quoted ;  all  other  Arabic  numerals  denote  the  pages  on  which  they  are 
quoted. 

379 


380 


INDEX 


10,  48T  34.  10,  55,  146  ;  36.  91  ; 
37.  Sf,  91,  188  ;  39.  48,  93  ;  40. 
48. 

XV.  :  1-3.  104  ;  2.  104  ;  5-8.  31  ; 
7.81;  8.84;  9.  10,  118;  10.75, 
122  ;   32.  50  ;   51.  104 

XVI.  :  1.  10,  12,  22  ;  1-2.  55  ;  10. 
43  ;  15.  42,  62,  125  ;  16.  123  ; 
19.  10,  21,  22,  123 

2  Corinthians  (circa  53-56  a.d.) 

I.  :    1.  10,  22,  80,  84  ;   24.  87 

II.  :   5.  87  ;  5-8.  96  ;  6.  33,  55  ;  6- 

9.  55  ;  9.  89 

III.  :  1.  55,  81,  173  ;  1-3.  83,  88  ; 
2.  55  ;  3.  62  ;  6.  62 ;  7.  62 ;  8. 
62  ;  12.  83 

IV.  :  1.  62 

V.  :  16.  82  ;  18.  62 

VI.  :  3.  62,  87  ;  4.  62  ;  16.  46  ;  18. 
46 

VII.  :  5.  83  ;  11.  87 

VIII.  :  1.  10  ;  4.  62  ;  9.  104  ;  15. 
46  ;  19.  10,  55,  60,  62  ;  20.  62  ; 
23.  10,  79  ;  24.  10 

IX.  :  1.  62  ;  9.  46  ;  12.  62  ;  13.  62 

X.  :  1.  82,  83,  104  ;  5.  46 

XI.  :  5.  81  ;  6.  46  ;  8.  10,  73  ;  9. 
73  ;  13.  81  ;  21.  83  ;  22.  10,  82  ; 
23.  82  ;  28.  10 

XII.  :    1.  82  ;   1-4.  78  ;    1-5.  9,  94  ; 

10.  83  ;  11.  81  ;  12.  82,  83  ;  13. 
10  ;    18.  142  ;   28.  10 

XIII.  :  2.  89  ;  3.  89  ;  5.  100  ;  6. 
100 

Galatians  (circa  53-55  a.d.) 

I.  :  1.  84  ;  2.  10,  21  ;  7.  80  ;  8.  80  ; 
13.  3,  10,  118  ;  15-17.  78  ;  19. 
81,  119;  22.  10,  118 

II.  :  1.  32  ;  3.  142  ;  6.  80  ;  7.  75  ; 
7-9.  84 ;  8.  75  ;  9.  20,  75,  79, 
119  ;   12.  119 

III.  :  3-5.  91  ;  26-28.  58  ;  27.  16  ; 
28.  12 

IV.  :  6.  44  ;  11.  122  ;  13.  89  ;  14. 
95 ;   19.  89 


VI.  :  1.  33,  69,  96  ;  6.  73,  98,  104  ; 
16.5 

Romans  (circa  54-57  a.d.) 

I. :   7.  72 

III. :  29.  22 

VI.  :    3-6.  16  ;    17.  105 

VIII.:   15.44 

XI. :   13.  62  ;  27.  12 

XII.  :  1.  34  ;  3-16.  8  ;  6.  71,  91, 
93,  150  ;  6-8.  60,  63  ;  7.  62,  70, 
91  ;  8.  61,  123 

XIII.  :   4.  62 

XV.  :  8.  62  ;  16.  34  ;  20.  75  ;  25. 
62 ;   31.  62 

XVI.  :  1.  10  ;  1.  62  ;  1-3.  123  ;  2. 
123  ;  3-5.  42  ;  3-15.  59  ;  4.  10  ; 
5.  10,  123  ;  6.  122  ;  7.  79  ;  10. 
42,  123;  11.  42,  123;  12.  122; 
14.  42,  123  ;  15.  42,  123  ;  16.  10, 
21  ;   21-23.  21  ;   23.  10,  42,  50 

Ephesians  (circa  58  a.d.) 

I.  :    1.  7  ;   22.  10 

II.  :   20.  74 

III.  :    7.  62  ;    10.  10  ;    21.  10      f  -f. 

IV.  :  4-6.  14  ;  4-13.  8  ;  7-12.  63  ; 
11.  74-80;  12.  62;  15.  105;  16. 
49,  105 

V.  :  23.  10,  25  ;  24.  10  ;  25.  10  ; 
27.  10  ;   29.  10  ;    32.  10 

VI.  :  21.  62 

CoLOSSiANS  (circa  56-58  a.d.) 

I.  :  1.  80  ;  2.  7  ;  7.  62  ;  18.  10,  25  ; 
23.  62  ;  24.  10  ;  25.  62 

III.  :    14.  14 

IV.  :  1.  21  ;  2.  21  ;  7.  62  ;  15.  10, 
42,  123  ;   16.  10,  21  ;   17.  62 

Philippians    (circa   56-58   a.d.) 

I.  :   1.  7,  62,  80 

II.  :    17.  34  ;  25.  81 

III.  :    6.  10  ;    17.  89 

IV.  :  10.  73  ;  15.  10  ;  18.  34  ;  21. 
21  ;   22.  21 


INDEX 


381 


Philemon  (circa  56-58  a.u.) 
2.  10,  42,  123  ;   13.  62 

1  Timothy  (circa  64  a.d.) 

I.  :    12.  62  ;    18.  143 

II.  :   7.  74  ;   11.  146  ;   12.  146 

III.  :  1.  87,  146  ;  1-7.  163  ;  1-9. 
60;  2-7.  146;  5.  10,  146;  7. 
146  ;  8.  146  ;  8-10.  147  ;  8-13. 
62,  163  ;  9.  146  ;  10.  146  ;  12. 
146,  147  ;  13.  146,  147  ;  15.  10 

IV.  :  6.  62  ;  14.  143 

V.  :  9.  202  ;  16.  10  ;  17.  70,  73, 
163,  202  ;  18.  202  ;  17-20.  147  ; 
19.  187,  188  ;  20.  87 

2  Timothy  (circa  64  a.d.) 

I.  :  6.  143  ;  11.  74  ;  18.  62 

II.  :  2.  146  ;  4-7.  202 
IV.  :  5.  62,  80 

Titus  (circa  64  a.d.) 

I.  :  4.  142  ;  5.  87  ;  5-7.  163  ;  7. 
165  ;  7-9.  158. 

III.  :  10.  87 

Acts  (circa  80  a.d.) 

I.  :  17.  62  ;  21.  82  ;  21-23.  82  ; 
22.  80  ;  23.  32  ;  23-26.  82  ;  25. 
77 

II.  :  16.  91  ;  46.  41.  53 
V. :  11.  10 

VI.  :  1.  54,  62  ;  2.  54,  60 
115  ;  3.  65,  87,  115,  117 
5.  32 

VIII.  :  1.  10  ;  3.  10  ;  5, 
27.  24 ;  40.  66 

IX.:  2.  113;  10.  77;  31, 

X.  :  46.  47 

XI.  :  1-4.  32  ;  22.  10,  24, 
24  ;  26.  10  ;  27.  91  ;  28 
29.  62  ;  30.  21,  153,  163 

XII.  :  1.  10  ;  5.  10  ;  12. 
42,  119;  25.  21,  62 

XIII.  :  1.  10,  91,  92,  95  ; 
2.79,82,95;  3.79;  6. 


XIV.:  4.79;  14.  79;  23.  10,  118. 

137,  154,  158,  163  ;  27.  10 
XV. :  3.  10  ;  4.  10,  163  ;  6.  163  ; 

12.  32;  13.  119;  16.  5  ;  22.  10, 

92,  163;  22-29.  32,  27.  328; 

30-34.  328;  32.  91,  110,  328; 

41.  10 
XVI.  :  1-4.  143  ;  4.  163  ;  5.  10 
XVIII.  :  2.  123  ;  8.  50  ;  22.  10  ; 

26.  123 
XIX. :  6.  47  ;  9.  41,  126,  134  ;  10 

22,  41  ;  22.  62  ;  23.  134  ;  41.  4 
XX.  7.  22  ;  17.  10,  158,  162,  163 

24.  62  ;  28.  5,  10 
XXI. :  8.  80,  117  ;  9.  91  ;  10.  91, 

98  ;  18.  42,  119  ;  19.  62 
XXII.  :  4.  113  ;  21.  92 
XXIV.  :  14.  113  ;  17.  34 
XXVI .:  27.  92 
XXVIII.  :  33-35.  53 

Revelation 

I.  :  4.  10  ;  11.  10  ;  20.  10 

II.:  10;  1.  10;  2.  100,233;  7.10; 
11.  10 ;  14.  100,  233  ;  15.  100, 
233;  17.  10;  19.  62;  20.  92, 
100,  233  ;  29.  10 

III.  :  6.  10  ;  7.  27  ;  13.  10  ;  20. 
53 ;  22.  10 

IV.  :  4.  163  ;  10.  163 

V.  :  46  ;  5.  163  ;  6.  163  ;  8.  163  ; 
9-13.  45 


1,  62,  65, 

VI.  :   46 

;   4.  62  ; 

XL  :    17.  45  ;    18.  92 
XV.:   3.45 

66;   14- 

XVI.  :   6.  92 
XVIII.  :   20.  74 

.  10 

XXI.  :   9.  10 

XXII.  :   9.  95  ;    16.   10 

,  32  ;   23. 

i.  91,  98  ; 

Hebrews 

41  ;    17. 

I.  :    14.  62  ; 
VI.:   10.62 

1-3.  74  ; 

XIII.  :    7.  72,  73,  92  ;    15.  34  ; 

16 

233 

34 

382 


INDEX 


1  Peter 

I.  :    1.  163  ;    12.  62 

II.  :    5.  34  ;    9.  10  ;    12.  165  ;    17. 
10,  21  ;  25.  167 

IV.:    9-11.  63;    10.  30,  62;    11.  62 
V. :   1.  155,  158 


2  Peter 

11.  ; 

:   1.  233 

James 

II.; 

;    2.  113 

III. 

:    1.  105 

v.: 

14.  10 

1  John 

IV.  :    1.   102  ;    1-3.  71,  100,  233  ; 
20.  115 

3  John 
6.  10  ;   9.  10  ;   10.  10 

Clement  of  Rome.      1  Epistle 
(circa  96  a.d.) 

I.  :   3.  159 

III.  :   3.  159,  161 

V.  :    139  ;   6.  269 
IX.  :    3.  165 
XXL  :    6.  159,  161 
XXXVI.  :    1.  123 
XXXVII.:    194 
XL.  :   5.  307 

XLIL  :   80  ;   1-2.  75  ;  4.  123,  159  ; 

5.  159,  161 
XLIIL  :   4.  152 

XLIV.  :    1.  152,  160  ;    4.  160  ;    4- 

6.  160  ;   5.  159,  160 
XLVII.  :   6.  159,  160,  161 
XLVIII.  :    80  ;    5.  216 
LIV.  :    2.  159,  160,  161,  176 
LVIL  :    1.  159,  160,  161 
LXI. :   3.  123 

LXm. :    1.  178 
LXIV.':^  123 
LXV.V^  1.  328 


Pliny  (111-113  a.d.) 

Epistles  to  Trajan 

96  (97).  45,  128,  135 
VIII:    16.  124 

Ignatius  (circa  116  a.d.) 

Epistle  to  the  Ephesians 

1.  186,  200 ;  2.  197,  198,  200 ;  3. 
191,  193 ;  4.  188,  191,  197,  198  ; 
5.  191  ;  6.  189,  197,  193 ;  7. 
188,  189,  200  ;  9.  188,  194  ;  13. 
191  ;  14.  188 ;  15.  194 ;  19. 
188  ;   20.  191,  197,  198  ;   31.  200 

Epistle  to   the   Magnesians 

1.  189,  191,  192;  2.  171,  196,  197, 
198,  200 ;    3.  192,  193,  197  ;    4. 

197  ;  6.  171,  190,  191,  196,  197, 
200 ;  7.  190,  191,  197  ;  8.  171  ; 
10-11.  194;  11.  200;  13.  191, 
196,  197,  198 ;  15.  190 

Epistle  to  the  Trallians 

1.  200;    2.  171,  190,  193,  196,  197, 

198  ;  3.  190,  191,  197,  198,  199  ; 
5.  192;  6-11.  194;  7.  171,  196, 
198  ;    12.  197  ;    13.  197,  198 

Epistle  to  the  Romans 

Preface,  269  ;  4.  188  ;  5.  186 

Epistle  to  the  Philadelphians 

I.    188;    3.    193;    preface  4.    171, 

196,  198  ;  5.  198  ;  6.  194, 
200;    7.  66,  171,  189,  193,  196, 

197,  198,  236,  241  ;  8.  195,  196, 
197  ;   9.  196  ;    10.  171,  196,  200 

Epistle  to  the  Smyrneans 

1.  190;  4.  200;  5-7.  194;  8. 
14,  50,  171,  190,  194,  196,  197  ; 
9.  193,  197;  11.  200;  12.  171, 
196  ;    14.  36  ;    16.  66 

Epistle  to  Polycarj> 

1.  188  ;  2.  188,  189,  200 ;  3.  199, 
200  ;  4.  197,  199  ;  5.  198,  199, 
200  ;  6.  171,  196,  197  ;  7.  200 


INDEX 


383 


POLYCARP 

Epistle  to  the  Philippians 
36;    3.  199;   4.  115,  183;    6.  115; 
6-12.  199 

Epistle  of  Barnabas  (circa  130) 

IV.  :  9.  105  ;  VIII.  :  3.  80  ;  XI.  : 
221 

The  Didache  (circa  135  a.d.) 
I.-VI.  :  174 
IV. :  1.  70,  72,  90,  95 
VII.:  174 
VIII.:  44 

X.  :  52,  53  ;  1.  50  ;  7.  95,  99,  174 
XI :  175  ;  1.  100,  234  ;  2.  100, 

234  ;  3.  74  ;  4.  82  ;  5.  82  ;  6. 

82  ;  7.  213  ;  8.  103,  234  ;  9-12. 

103  ;  10.  92  ;  11.  100 
XII.:  173 

XIII.  :  98  ;  1.  74,  100,  202  ;  1-3. 
73  ;  2.  74,  105  ;  3.  174,  307  ;  3- 
7.  174  ;  12.  175  ; 

XIV.  :  54  ;  1.  52  ;  1-2.  175 

XV. :  1.  175,  176  ;  2.  70,  105,  175, 

176 
XVI.:  2.74 

Sources    op    Apostolic    Canons 
(140-180  A.D.) 

I.  :  4.  178 ;  10-15.  178  ;  15-23. 
178  ;   22.  178 

II.  :  180  ;  15.  178,  185  ;  18.  178  ; 
19.  178,  180  ;  23.  180 

IV.:  181 

V. :  181 ;  13-15.  203 

Victor  op  Rome  (circa  190) 
De  Aleatoribus 

I.  15,  21 

Pastor  of  Hermas     (circa     140) 
Visiones 

II.  :  4.  123,  207 

III.  :   5.  74  ;   7.  95,  268  ;  9.  165 

Mandata 

IV.  :   295  ;   3.  97,  268 
XI:   234 


IX. 


Similitudines 
15.  74 


Justin  Martyr  (circa  150  a.d.) 

1  Apology 

229;  13.  113,  309;  65.  123,255; 
65-67.  309;  67.  50,  123,  173, 
201,  208,  252,  253,  255,  256, 
338 

Dialogue  with  Trypho 

28.  309;  29.  309;  39.  240;  82. 
234,  240;  116-118.  309;  117. 
36,  309 

Tatian  (circa  172  a.d.) 
Address  to  the  Greeks 
§  28.  231  ;   §  29.  231  ;  §  42.  231 

Athenagoras  (circa  177-180  a.d.) 

Plea  for  the  Christians 
§  3.  230  ;   §  7.  242  ;  §  9.  242  ;   §  13. 
308  ;  §  37.  230 

Irenaeus  (circa  180-202) 
Contra  Haereses 

I.  :  X.  1.  223  ;  x.  2.  223  ;  xiii. 
234  ;    xiii.  4.  227,  241 

II.  :  xxxii.  4.  227,  240  ;  xxxii.  5. 
240  ;    xxxiii.  3.  227 

III.  :  i.  269  ;  ii.  1.  223  ;  ii.  2.  225  ; 
iii.  269  ;  iii.  1.  225  ;  iii.  2.  228  ; 
iii.  3.  225  ;  iv.  1.  223,  224  ;  iv. 
2.  223,  224  ;  xi.  3.  222  ;  xi.  9. 
213,  227,  234  ;   xxiv.  1.  223,  227 

IV.  :  xxvi.  2.  213,  225,  227  ;  xxvi. 
4.  225  ;  xxvi.  5.  225,  227  ; 
xxvii.  1.  223,  225 ;  xxxii.  1. 
225  ;   xxxiii.  8.  225 

V.  :   vi.  1.  96,  227  ;   vi.  47 

Clement    of    Alexandria   (circa 
190-202) 

Strotnata 

VI :    13.  282 

VII.  :   6.  36  ;  5.  43 


384 


INDEX 


Tertullian  (200-217  a.d.) 

Apology 
§  1.  230  ;  §5.  232  ;  §  21.  134  ;  §  39. 
21,  172,  202  ;  §42.  232 

De  praescriptione  Haeretic- 
orum 
§  4.  80  ;  §  19.  221  ;  §  20.  21,  156, 
172,  268,  271 ;  §  24.  269  ;  §  32. 
225,  226,  271  ;  §  36.  225,  226, 
271  ;  §  37.  75  ;  §  39,  221  ;  §  40. 
308  ;   §  41.  208  ;   §  42.  222 

De  fuga  in  persecviione 
§  14.  15 

De  pudicitia 
§  1.  275,  276,  281  ;   §  7.  275  ;  §  13. 
21,  297;  §  21.  15,  97,  268,  270, 
272,    274,    295,    §  22.  227,  274, 
296,  317 

De  poenitentia 
§  10.  15  ;  §  7.  274 

De  exhortatione  castitatis 
§  7.  15,  245 

Ad  tixorem 
I.  :    7.  36,  115 

Ad  martyr  as 
I.  :    1.  296 

Adversus  Marcionem 
I.  :    1.  222 
IV.  :   5.  269  ;  9.  267 

De  anima 
§  9.  240 

Adversus  Praxean 
§  1.  243 

Scorpiace 
§  5.  269 

De  jejunio 
§  13.  313,  326,  333 

De  baptistno 
§  5.  308  ;  §  17.  306 

Canons  of  Hippolytus  (circa  230- 
250  A.D.) 

I.  :    250 

II.  :   246,  250  ;   7-9.  71 


III.  :    246,  253,  255  ;    11-19.  331 
IV.:   249 

V.  :   249,  255  ;    14.  248  ;    15.  248 
VI.:   248 

VIII.  :    248 

IX.  :    183,  246,  256 
XI.-XVI. :   250 
XII.:  253 
XIV.:  232 

XVII.  :    251,  257,  258 

XIX. :  249,  250,  251,  253,  254,  257, 

258 
XXL:  251 
XXII.  :    251 
XXIV.  :   254,  257,  258 
XXVII.:   251,262 
XXIX.  :   254,  257,  258 
XXXII. :   202,  255,  256,  257 
XXXIV.:   258 
XXXV.:  256 

XXXVI.  :   254,257 

XXXVII.  :    253 

Hippolytus  (235-258  a.d.) 

Refutation  of  all  Heresies 
I.  :   281 
VII.  :   26.  222 

IX. :  6.  274,  281  ;  7.  135,  274,  276, 
281 

Cyprian  (250-258  a.d.) 

1  Epistle 

III.  :    1.  265,  302,  306  ;   3.  303 

IV.  :   2.  303  ;  4.  265,  306 

V.  :    1.  292 
VII.:   304 

XI.  :    3.  4.  300,  303,  313  ;    7.  303  ; 
8.297 

XIII.  :   5.  300 

XIV.  :    2.  292,  303,  304  ;    4.  292, 

297,  316. 

XV.  :    1.  292,  297,  303,  316,  317  ; 
2.  303,  304 

XVI.  :    4.  297,  313,  316  ;    3.  293, 
303  ;  2.  326 

XVII.  :    1.  316  ;    2.  293,  303  ;    3. 

298,  293 


INDEX 


385 


1.  313j 


XVIII. :   293,  300,  303  ;   304,  1.  2. 
3-26 

XIX.  :   1.  2.  290,  293,  303,  316,  331 

XX.  :    1.  292,  293  ;  2.  294,  326  ;  3. 
300,  304 

XXL:  289 
XXV.:  294 
XXVI.:   294 

XXX.  :    5.  8.  294,  316,  331 

XXXI.  :   3.  289  ;   6.  7.  298,  316 
XXXIII.:  299 

XXXIV.  :  4.  304 

XXXIX 

XL.:  294,301 

XLL  :    301,  304 

XLIL:   294 

XLIIL  :    301  ;    1.  288  ;   3.  29;  ;   7. 

266,  306,  316,  317,  331 
XLIV. :  316 
XLV. :   316 
XLV.  :    316  ;   4.  355 
XLVI.  :   2.  326 
XLVIIL  :   4.  303 
XLIX. :  2.  331,  333 ;  3.  355 
LIL  :    1.  355  ;   2.  318 
LV.  :    2.  4.  303,  315  ;    5.  331  ;    6. 

315,  316 ;   8.  302,  303,  330  ;   21. 

275 ;  22.  304 
LVII.  :    5.  66,  227,  313,  315  ;    1. 

300,  304 
LIX.  :    1.  9.  355  ;  4.  265,  303,  306  ; 

5.302,303,312;  6.302,330;  13. 

316;    14.  17.  315;    15.  316 


LXIL:   305 

LXIII.  :    10.  11.  304 

LXIV.  :    1.  316,  315 

LXV.  :  312 

LXVI.  :     1.    9.    303,     312,    316 ; 

4,  311;  5.  305,  330;  8.  306;    10. 
66,  313  ;    3.  265 

LXVII.  :    1.  316  ;    3.  212  ;    4.  302 

5.  302,  330  ;  6.  127 
LXVIIL:    302 
LXIX.  :    302 
LXX.  :    1.  316 

LXXL  :    1.  303,  317  ;    4.  326 
LXXIL  :    1.  316  ;    3.  315 
LXXIII.  :    1.  316  ;   3.  326  ;   7.  304, 

306  ;   9.  306  ;   26.  315 
LXXIV.  :   10.315 
LXXV.  :  7.  306  ;   16.  311,  318  ;   17 

318 
LXXVIII.  :    1.  355 

De  Lapsis 
§  6.  203,  310  ;  §  8.  288 

Ad  Donatum 
§  15.  285 

Testimonia 
III.  :   28.  297 

De  Ecclesiae  Unitate 
§§  1.  4.  9.  10.  14.  17.  305  ;  §  5.  314  ; 
§  20.  300 

De  Opere  et  Eleemosynis 
§  1.  304,  310  ;   §§  5.  6.  310 


25 


INDEX    OF    NAMES    AND    SUBJECTS 


"Above,  from,"  25  n,  121,  235 

Achaia,  Churches  of,  22 

Achelis,  Dr.  Hans,  245  n,  252  n,  25G, 
304  » 

"  Activities  {Ivepyrjixara)  become 
offices,  64  n,  149,  150 

Acolytes,  355 

dSeA^oTiys  (the  church),  21,  182 
(the  laity).  326 

Agabus,  91,  98 

Agape.     See  Love-feasts 

Alcibiades,  95  7i 

Alexandria,  49,  106,  129,323/,  339 

Almoner  of  the  Church,  185,  304 

"Altar"  (the  poor),  115 »,  183; 
208,  257.     See  OvcTLaa-rrjpiov. 

Ambrose  of  Milan,  360  ?i 

"  Amen  "  in  public  worship,  44 

Amentia.     See  Ecstasy 

Ammia,  prophetess,  236 

avaXoyia  t'^s  Trt'crrews,  l\n 

"  Anamneseis,"  257  n 

Anicetas  of  Rome,  324 

Antioch,  Church  in,  24,  32,  74,  83, 
90  /,  98,  186,  328,  332 

Ancyra,  325  /,  328 

Antiphonal  singing,  45  n 

Antistes  Christi,  a  bishop  is  the,  305 

Apelles'  creed  (Gnostic),  222  n 

Aphrodite,  49 

Apollos,  an  apostle,  80 

Apologists,  The,  230  / 

Apostles,  the  word,  76  n,  85  ;  marks 
of,  75,  82  ff  ;  others  besides  the 
Twelve,  31,76  ;7,  79  #;  increased 
in  number,  82  ;  differed  in  call 
and  preparation,  76  ;    and  evan- 


gelists, 80  n  ;  of  the  Churches, 
78;  false,  80 n,  81;  "pre-emi- 
nent," 81  ;  their  twofold  action, 
86;    succession  of,  311;    8,  31, 

^  73,  74,/^ 

OLTTOCTToXr],    77 

"  Apostohc  Canons,"  177  h.  See 
Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons 

ApostoHc  Churches,  225,  271 

"  Apostolic  Constitutions,"  56  n,  5 
I83n,  184,  281,  282  n 

"  ApostoHc  men,"  225,  279 

"Apostolic  Succession,"  224/7;  a 
legal  fiction,  278  ff  ;  a  creation 
of  the  Roman  Qiurch,  278,  280  ; 
historical  basis,  223  fj,  279  ff  ; 
growth  of  idea,  280  ;  "  gnosti- 
cally  perfect "  men,  282  ;  Neo- 
Platonic  succession,  283  n  ;  suc- 
cession of  Apostles,  311  ;  not  in 
Ignatius,  197,  198 ;  nor  in 
Apostohc  Constitutions,  281  ; 
and  Judaising  Christians,  19  n 

Apprentice  mission  of  the  Twelve, 
31,  77 

"  Approaching  God,"  34 

Aquila,  42  n 

Arena,  The,  50 

Arian  idea  in  thought  of  priest- 
hood, 25  n 

Aristides,  the  Apologist,  36  n,  230 

Aries,  Synod  of,  179  n,  329  n 

ap^KTwayoiyoSj   130,   131  n,   153  n 

apxoi'Tes  in  Synagogues,  130,  153  ?i 

Asceticism,  220,  233 

Assembly  of  the  Cliurch.  See 
Congregational  Meeting 


386 


INDEX 


387 


Assimilative  power  in  Oriental  re- 
ligions, 101,  140  n 

Astarte,  49 

Athenagoras,    230  n,  242,  308  ?i. 

Attains,  95  n,  236 

Audience  Halls,  42,  124,  286 

Angsburg,  Confession  of,  72  ?j 

Augustus,  the  word,  343  n  ;  wor- 
shipped as  a  god,  3,  342  /  ;  pro- 
tected the  Jews,  129  ;  restored 
Roman  religion,  342  ;  instituted 
the  Imperial  cult,  342 

Aurelian,  333  n 

Authority  in  the  Church,  24,  25  n, 
26,  28,  32,  298/7 

Bannerman,  D.D.,  11  n,  26 n 

Baptism,  3 «,  16,  136,  174,  198, 
249/,  306 

Barnabas,  22,  24,  32,  91,  95,  98, 
116,  118,  UZn;  Epistle  of,  65, 
177  ?i,  221 

Basilica.     See  Audience  Hall 

Batanea,  337 

Beatitudes,  The,  172 

Beaudouin,  341 7i,  344  n 

"Benediction,"  The,  44 

Benson,  Archbishop,  284??,  285  n, 
291  ?i,  292  w,  300  ri,  314,  318  ?i 

Beryllus,  332 

BeurUer,  Abbe,  341  n,  352 

Bible-woman,  181 

"  Bind  and  loose,"  26 

Bishops,  heads  of  local  churches, 
178;  pastors,  178  w,  323,  327, 
330  n;  qualifications  and  duties, 
179 »,  182,  199,301/;  appoint- 
ment of,  described,  246,  302, 
330 ;  elected  by  the  people,  1 75, 
246 ;  ordained  by  elders,  246 ; 
by  three  bishops  (Synods),  179  ?^, 
327,  329/;  unlettered,  182; 
worked  at  trades,  203  ;  elders 
and  deacons  an  inseparable 
unity,  171  n,  196 ;  limited  powers, 
179,  196,  200,  277;  centre  of 
congregational    life,  198,    304//, 


338,  246  /,  253  ;  presided  over 
discipUne,  199,  300,  303;  dis- 
tributed offerings,  180,  185,  209, 
255  ;  paymaster  of  the  clergy, 
304;  supremacy  of,  195,  298, 
301/,  304,  314,  334;  represen- 
tative of  Christ,  305/,  197  ; 
have  charismatic  gifts,  227,  313  ; 
judges  of  teaching,  223  fl' ;  have 
power  to  pardon  sins,  276  w,  300, 
303,  306  ;  power  comes  from  God 
directly,  301  /,  312  n  ;  represent 
God,  282  n,  301  ;  priests  in  a 
unique  sense,  305/7,  357;  took 
the  places  of  the  priests  of  the 
Imperial  Cult,  352/;  Imperial 
ideas  influenced  later  conceptions 
of,  335  ;  cease  to  be  bishops 
when  guilty  of  grievous  sin,  65, 
128  n,  152,  176,312 

Bithynia,  128  ?i 

Bleek,  47  n 

"  Body  of  Christ,  "  14n,  136 

Boehmer,  116  n 

Boissier,  Gaston,  101  n,  121  n,  341  n 

Boxing  match,  50 

"Brotherhood,"  The  Church,  10 ?t, 
20,  21,  52,  54,  181,  182;  the 
laity,  326 

"  Brethren,"  Christians  called  the, 
11,  114  n  ;  the  laity,  326  ;  mem- 
bers of  confraternities,  125 

Bruston,  Edouard,  187  Ji 

Bryennios,  Philotheos,  171  «,  112n 

Burial  Clubs,  126,  133;  the  Ro- 
man Church,  129  »,  135  ?i 

Burial  Usages,  135,  257  n 

Caesarea,  Cliurch  in,  91.  98 

Caesarea  Philippi,  3 

CaUxtus  of  Rome,  on  penitence, 
274,  276  n,  297,  299,  317  n  ;  en 
ApostoUc  Succession,  280 

"  Call "  of  an  Apostle,  76,  84 

Calvin,  John,  72  n 

Canon  (Scripture)  of  IMarcion,  220  ; 
of  Gnostics,  222 


388 


INDEX 


Canons  of  Basil,  203  n,  267  ?r 

Canons  of  Hippolytus,  50  n,  53  n 
54  71,  71  n,  183  n,  202,  205,  245  ff 
331  71 

Cassius.     See  Dio  Cassius 

Catechetical  School  of  Alexandria, 
106  » 

Catechumens,  52,  104,  251,  267 

Celsus  caricature  of  prophets,  109  7i 

Cenchrea,  49,  124  7i 

Character,  the  qualification  for 
office,  145  /,  178  /,  247 

Charis7na  Veritatis,  227  /,  280  .-p:|| 

Charismata,  15,  63,  71,  etc.  See 
"  Gifts  " 

Charismatic  Ministry,  70 

Charity,  22 ;  its  place  in  the 
Primitive  Church,  115/.  See 
Almoner,  Bishop,  Offerings,  Poor 

Chloe,  50 

Christ.     See  Jesus  Christ 

"  Christ-trafficker,"  173 

Church,  the  word  ;  used  by  Jesus, 
3n  ;  by  Paul,  5  ;  uses  in  N.T., 
10  m-,  14,  55.     See  Ecclesia 

Church,  The,  crystallizes  round 
Christ,  190,  192;  a  fellowship, 
6  ff,  20,  271  ;  an  organism,  8, 
15  n  ;  a  unity,  10  y/  ;  a  visible 
unity,  16  ff,  156,  182,  268  ff ; 
historical  continuity,  223  ff,  19, 
24  ;  Household  of  God,  23,  145  /, 
189 ;  a  theocratic  democracy, 
4,  25,  33,  177  ;  has  authority, 
24  ff,  309  ;  a  sacerdotal  society, 
33  if,  307  ;  what  makes  it,  9,  18  ; 
266,  268  ff 

Church,  The  Local,  what  makes  it, 
69,  266 ;  of  less  than  twelve 
families,  178,  337  ;  must  elect 
office-bearers,  175,  178 ;  self- 
governing,  20,  32,  49,  121  ;  inter- 
communication, 21  /,  73,  173, 
178,  199,  271,  290/7  («ee  Synod), 
power  of  discipline,  27,  32,  55  ff 
199  /  {see  Bishop,  Elder) ;  ruled 
by  a  senate,  155  /,  170 ;  by  bishop 


and  council,  180  ff,lQl  f;  merged 
in  the  bishop,  306 ;  external 
likeness  to  Jewish  synagogue, 
134 ;  to  pagan  confraternity, 
128  71,  135 

Chrj'sostom,  64  w,  79  n 

aiicia,  118 

Clarus  of  Mascula,  311  w 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  15,  36  n, 
43  n,  171  71,  282 

Clement  of  Rome,  65,  76  »,  80  ??, 
123  n.  141 71,  151,  152  ??,  176,  183, 
193,  216  ?i 

Clergy,  unsalaried,  202  //  ;  worked 
at  trades,  203 ;  245, 246, 276.  See 
Pastor,  Bishop,  Elder,  Deacon, 
Minor  Orders,  Orders 

Cohn,  127  71 

Collection,  The  Great,  22 /,  34  n  ; 
in  kiTid,  254 

Collegia.     See  Confraternities 

Collegia  tenuiorum,  133 

Collegiate  Churches,  260,  330w, 
339 

Collossae,  22,  42  n,  59 

Commands  of  Jesus,  88  n,  104 

Commission,  a,  superseding  the 
office-bearers,  294,  301 

"  Commissioners  of  Sacrifices,"  The, 
288 

Co77i7nu7iicatio  Pads,  156,  270 

Concihar  system  of  Church  Go- 
vernment, 170  n 

Confession,  The  Augsburg,  72  n  ; 
The  Westminster,  72  re 

Confession,  The,  of  St.  Peter,  6, 
25/7 

Confession,  in  Public  Worship, 
44 

CoTifessor,  289  n,  290;  made  El- 
ders, 247 

"  Confirmation,"  340 

Confraternities,  pagan,  to  practise 
rehgions,  50,  54??,  organization, 
125/;  ilhcit,  133,  135;  not 
models  for  Christian  organi- 
zation, 128  / 


INDEX 


389 


Congregational  Meetings,  for  ex- 
hortation, 44  /,  251  ;  for  the 
Eucharist,  50  /,  252  ;  for  busi- 
ness, 54  fj,  60,  60,  173,  175,  199  n, 
200,  250,  316  ;  passed  judgment 
on  Apostles,  32  / 

Congregationahsm  and  Primitive 
Organization,  259 

Constantine,  134 

Converts,  The  first,  earUest  office- 
bearers, 60,  122  /,  152,  154 

Cornelius,  24 

Corinth,  Church  at,  7,  12,  14,  17,- 
33  H,  49/,  56,  59/7,  74,  83,  91/, 
101,  160/,  299  ?i 

Corycus,  Inscriptions  at,  203 

Cramer,  \20  n 

Creeds,  Gnostic,  222  ;  a  common 
creed,  222,  270 

Cureton,  187  n 

Cybele,  49 

Cyprian  of  Carthage,  dates,  286  n  ; 
relations  to  his  elders,  291  //,  294, 
331  ;  to  the  Roman  Elders,  291, 
293;  the  Lapsed,  294//;  au- 
thority, 298  ff  ;  independence  of 
bishops,  315  ;  sacerdotalism, 
305  ff ;  his  visions,  66,  95  n, 
97  n,  284  n,  313  ;  use  of  Synods, 
313  /  ;  his  character,  284  n  ; 
pagan  ideas,  357      ^ 

Cyrene,  Jews  in,  129 


Demons,  Fear  of,  258  n 

Derbe,  118,  142,  154 

De  Rossi,  124,  135  n 

Desjardins,  341  n,  350 

8ta8o;^r/,  311  H 

StaKovm,  8  n,  60  n,  62  /  n,  70  n 

ZiaKpLCTL';,  64  n,  99  / 

hhaxq,  46,  105  n 

Didache,  The,  65,  74,  82,  170,  171  //, 
183,  213,  etc. 

Diligentia,  292 

Dio  Cassius,  4  n,  133  n,  344  n 

Dionysius  of  Corinth,  299  n 

Directory  for  Ordination  of  Minis- 
ters, 331  n 

Discernment,  The  Gift  of,  64  n,  70, 
71  n,  149,  175 

"  Disciple  Company,"  190 

Disciples,  9,  25,  27,  30,  113  ri 

Dispensatores  Dei,  301 

"  Dispersion,"  The,  116  n,  129,  153 

Divi  hnperatores,  345/,  351,  353 

Dobschiitz,  11  n 

DoUinger,  274  n 

Domnus  of  Antioch,  332 

Double  element  in  things,  18  ;  in 
missionary  work,  86  / 

Doxology,  The,  in  worship,  47 

Dress  of  the  clergy,  253,  353 

Dury,  v.,  341  n 

Dutch  Presbyterian  Church,  260  w. 
339 


Damascus,  77,  114  ?i 

Dates  of  N.T.  writings,  121  «,^137, 

138  n,  139  and  h,  159  n 
Deacons,  62  n,  65,  152,  180,  249  //, 

251,  316 
Dead,  memorial  feasts  for  the,  135, 

257 
Decian  Persecution,  287  /,  296,  338 
Decuriones,  125 
Deissmann,  119/1,  154  ri 
Delegates  from  Churches,  23  /,  55, 

200 
Democracy,  The  Church  at,  4,  25, 

177,  334,  357 


Eastern  Religions  within  the  Em- 
pire, 100  /,  140  n,  218 
Ecclesia,  the  history  of  the  word, 

4  and  n 
Ecstasy,  in  Prophecy,  94,  241 
Egyptian  priests  called  Elders, 154  n ; 
"  Election  by  show  of  hands,"  118  ; 
"  Eleven,"  The,  30,  84  / 
ekXcktoi  T/Dci?  ai'Spe?,  179  n 
Elders,   common  name  for  rulers, 
*"1S4  ;    among   the  Jews,    130  n  ; 
in   Churches   in   Palestine,    116, 
118;    in  the  Acts,  137,  142;    in 
Pastoral     Epistles,     142,     150  ; 


390 


INDEX 


elsewhere,  180,  196,  250,  etc.  ; 
applied  to  first  converts,  154 ; 
qualifications,  1 45,  1 80,  247  /  ; 
6rdination_ofj_248  ;  theoretically 
same  rank  as  bishops,  1G4  n,  205, 
250,  259  ;  received  moaey  for 
the  poor,  116,  180  ;  superin- 
tended the  bishop  180;  a  council 
round  the  bishop,  19S ;  could  or- 
dain a  bishop,  246  ;  successors 
ortEe"'Apo3tle3,  197,  225,  282  n  ; 
have  a  charisma  veritatis,  227 

Ehakim,  26 

h'epyyjjiiaTa,  64  n 

Ephesus,  Church  at,  59,  74,  100/, 
lUn;    Epistle,  10,  12,  74 

Epiphanius,  114  n,  141  n,  153  n, 
237  ?i 

iiTiTayi],  88  n 

EsGulapius,  217 

Etecusa,  289 

Eucharist,  prophets  presided  at  the, 
99  n,  offerings,  209  ;  in  the  third 
century,  252  ff  ;  a  unique  sacri- 
fice, 257,  305  fi  ;  3  n,  31  n,  35  /, 
43,  50/,  172 

"Evangelists,"  80  n  ;  Readers  to 
take  the  place  of,  182 

Exhortation,  the  meeting  for,  44  /, 
250/ 

External  Unity  of  the  Church, 
exhibited  in  fruits  of  the  Spirit, 
20;  by  Synods,  334;  by  har- 
mony of  bishops,  314  ;  by 
Roman  supremacj',  335,  353 

Fabian  of  Rome,  290 

False  Prophets,  91,  100  /,  109,  234  n 

Family  Council  assist  at  election, 

120 
Fechtrup,  284  » 
Fehcissimus  of  Carthage,  299 
Fellowship,     the     Church    a,     6  ff, 

191  ;    20/7,  55,  181,  268,  271 
Firmihan  of  Caesarea,  311  ?i,  318  ?i 
"  Firstfruits,"  98,   147,  174  /,  202, 

254,  282  n,  304 


"Five,"  The,  117 

Fiesh,  Sins  of  the,  to  be  pardoned, 

275 
Forum   of  Rome,   ancient  Church 

in  the,  42 
Foucart,  P.,  54  n,  127  n 
Francis  of  Assisi,  St.,  82 
Fraternitatis  Appdlatio,    15G.     See 

Brotherhood 
Freewill  offerings,  147,  201,  304 
Fruits  of  the  Spirit,  20,  24 
Fundanus,  Minucius,  229 
Funk,  F.  X.,  172  n,  245  n 

Gains  of  Corinth,  42,  50  ;  of  Didda, 
295 

Galatia,  Churches  of,  22,  91 

Gayford,  S.  G.,  90  n,   149  n,  377    - 

Gerard,  127  n 

yepovcria,  y£povcndp)(7j<;j   130 

"  Gifts,"  use  of  the  term,  63  n,  70  ; 
tv/o  great  classes,  214 ;  mani- 
fest the  presence  of  Christ,  8,  33, 
113  ;  create  a  Church,  121  ;  of 
speaking  the  V/ord,  8,  70,  75, 
214  ;  of  heahng,  64  )i,  248  ;  of 
leadership  and  service,  64,  113, 
151,  214  ;  of  discernment  and 
judging,  64  n,  71  n,  99,  149  ;  all 
service  a,  8  n,  16,  60,  69,  71, 
86 

"  Gilds  "  of  soothsayers,  100  ;  50, 
54  n.     See  Confraternities 

Gladness  in  the  Eucharistic  Ser- 
vice, 53  n 

yj'w/x7;,  88  ?i 

Gnostics,  65,  141  n,  218  /,  221  ;  a 
Gnostic  creed,  222  n  ;  Gnostic 
idea  in  mediating  priesthood,  25  n 

Gore,  Bishop,  6n,  89??,  171  n 

"Great"  Church,  The,  243,  259, 
323 

Greek  worship  of  rulers,  347 

Gregory  the  Great,  203  7i,  284 

Groups  of  Clmrches,  21  /,  323/; 
of  congregations,  337 

Gwatkin,  H.  M.,  75  n,  89  n,  116  n 


INDEX 


391 


Hadrian,  Emperor,  229 

Hand3,  Laying  on  of,  a  Jewish 
benediction,  143  n  ;  in  ordina- 
tion, 246 ;  in  restoration  to 
Church  communion,  147,  304 

Harnack,  Adolf,  G5  n,  70  n,  74  n, 
75  n,  80  n,  90  n,  97  n,  114  n,  121  h, 
130  n,  139  n,  150  /,  171  n,  176  n, 
177  n,  230  n,  238  n,  240  n.  274  n, 
281  n,  291  ?i,  333/1,  354  7i  ;  re- 
lation of  bishops  and  elders, 
157  ff  ;  on  organization,  369  fj 

Hartel,  283  /;,  318  n 

Hatch,  Edwin,  4  h,  116  ;j,  121  n, 
128  n,  202,  219  n,  302  n,  311  n  ; 
on  organization,  369  // 

Hegesippus,  119  / 

i^yovfX€voi,  oi,  73,  92 

Heinrici,  C.  F.  G.,  9  n,  47  n,  57  ?^ 
81  n,  90  H,  127  «,  128 

Hermas  of  Rome,  65,  74,  95,  97  n, 
123,  169  n,  176  n,  207  w,  234, 
241 

HierapoUs,  22,  236 

Hierarchy,  none  in  Early  Church. 
32  / ;  of  the  Imperial  Cult,  348  /  ; 
copied  in  the  Church,  350  ff 

Hinduism,  140  n,  218 

Hirschfeld,  Otto,  341  n,  347  n 

"Honoured,^'  The,  70  n,  73,  105, 
176  n 

Hort,  4  n,  6  n,  9  h,  11  «,  13  »,  31  n, 
60  n,  75  n,  11  n,  89,  147  n 

Hospitahty,  21,  173,  256 

House  Churches,  41  /,  59,  286 

Iconium,  118,  142,  154  ?i 

Ideal  Reality,  The  Church  is  an, 

16  ;   the  Ideal  Israel,  33,  5 
Idol  Feasts,  50,  54  n 
Idolatry,  a  deadly  sin,  295 
Ignatius,    of   Antioch,    a    prophet, 
66,    189/1,    192,   209,   236;     14, 
50  n,    186  ff,   233  ;     his   epistles, 
186  n  ;      prophetic     chants     in, 
189  n,  192 
Inner  circle  of  disciples,  30,  84 


Innocent  I.  of  Rome,  339  n 

Inscriptions,  1 14  n,  203 

Intercourse  between  Churches,  21, 
55,  153,  156 

Interpolation  of  Cyprian's  writ- 
ings, 317 

Invocation  of  Jesus  in  worship,  44 

Irenaeus,  on  a  succession  from  the 
Apostles,  225  /  ;  on  a  charisma 
veritatis,  227  ;  on  Prophecy, 
240  /  ;    47  n,  65,  213,  221,  223 

Isis,  49 

James,  pre-eminence  in  Jerusalem, 
119/;  5,  22,  42,  81 

Jerome,  164  n,  205 

Jerusalem,  11,  21  ff,  91  ;  its  po- 
verty, 116  h;  Church,  20,  28, 
53  n;  83,  98,  114  J^,  117,  118 

Jesus  Christ,  promise  of  the  Church, 
3/;  fellowship  with,  9,  190; 
manifests  His  Presence  in 
His  "  Gifts,"  7,  32,  113  ;  com- 
mands of,  88  n,  104;  sayings 
of,  46,  63,  104;  Head  of  the 
Church,  14,  25,  32,  190 

Je^vish  Synagogues,  organization, 
129 ;  resemblance  to  confra- 
ternities, 125,  131  ;  had  patrons, 
124  n,  130  n  ;  resemblance  to 
Churches,  131,  153  ;  Churches, 
91,  153  ;  religion,  protected, 
129,  133 

Jezebel,  a  prophetess,  92  n 

Josephus,  3  n,  117  n,  132  ;i 

Judge,  power  to,  spiritual  "  gifts," 
70,  71  ?i,  99  ff,  175 

Julius  Caesar,  protected  the  Jews, 
129  ;   worshipped  as  a  god,  342  / 

Justin  Martyr,  36,  50  n,  65,  105, 
114  H,  123,  173  n,  201/,  234, 
252,  308 

Justinian's  persecutions,  243,  359 

Kataphrygian  Cliurch,  The,  243 

Keating,  44  n 

Keys,  Power  of  the,  26  / 


392 


INDEX 


Kiss  of  Peace,  47 
KOLVwiaa,  9,  20,  271 
K07rLwvTe<;,  ol,  61  n,  122 
Krascheninnikoff,  341  n 
Kv^epv^aa<;,  8,  60,  64  n,  70  n,  136, 

149,  214. 
Ktihl,  9  n 

Lagarde,  P.  de,  245  n 

XakovvTe<;  rov  Xuyov,  ol,  72 

Lange,  116  n 

Laodicea,  21  n,  42  n,  59 

"  Lapsed,"  The,  290  ff,  295  /  ;  Ro- 
man Elders  on  the,  290  ;  Martyrs 
and  pardon,  295 

Law,  Christians  not  to  go  to,  56 

Leaders,  Leadership,  in  the  kins- 
folk of  Jesus,  119/;  related  to 
service  and  gifts,  63/,  113,  151  ; 
23,  60  /,  73,  92 

Lebanon,  43  n 

Lebegue,  341  n 

Lechaeum,  49 

"  Letters  of  Commendation,"  55, 
81,83,172 

Libellatici,  289 

Libdlus,  from  magistrates,  288  /  ; 
specimens  of,  289  n  ;  from 
martyrs,  290 

Licentious  cults,  3,  17 

Liebenam,  W.,  54  n,  124  n,  127  ?i, 
134  n,  135  n 

Lightfoot,  Bishop,  35,  74  ?i,  76  n, 
79  n,  80  71,  81  n,  82  n,  92  n,  116  n, 
152  n,  188  71,  187  n,  193  n,  195  n, 
197  n,  198  n,  229  n  ;  on  organi- 
zation, 365 

Littledale,  43  ?i 

Liturgy  of  St.  Clement,  43  n 

"  Living  sacrifices,"  34 

Loening,  Edgar,  75  n,  87  n,  88, 
90  n,  121  n,  151,  152  n,  112  n  ; 
on  organization,  371 

Xoyos  (TO<f)La<;,  46  )i,  64  n 

Loofs,  Fr.,  152  n,  166  ;  on  organi- 
zation, 374 

Lord's  Day,  52,  172,  252 


Lord's  Prayer,  in  %yorship,  44  n 
Lord's  Supper,  31  n,    36,  43,  50  /, 

52,    172,     174,    208,    305.     See 

Eucharist 
Lordship,  excluded  from  Christian 

ministry,  31  ;    introduced,  305  /, 

276  n,  282  n,  300,  301 
Love-feast,   17,  44,  50,  54  n,   198, 

255/ 
Lucian,  17,  129  n,  153,  173,  188  n 
Lucius  of  Cyrene,  91 
Liiders,  Otto,  127  n 
Luther,  35,  275  n 
Lycaonia,  98 
Lycus  Valley,  22 

Lyons,  The  Martyrs  of,  95  n,  296 
Lystra,  118,  142,  143  n,  154  n 

Macedonia,  Churches  of,  22 
Major-Domo,  26 

Majority  of  votes  decides,  33,  55 
Malchion,  Elder  at  Antioch,  332  / 
Manaen,  prophet,  91 
Marathi  schoohnastei',  106  n 
Marcion,  219  /  ;  Marcionite  Clmrch, 
its   organization,    208  n  ;     perse- 
cuted   by    Christian    Emperors, 
243;  65,  114  ?i,  219/ 
Marks  of  an  Apostle,  82  ?i,  83 
Marquhardt,  J.,  335  w,  341  ?i 
Martyr,  Justin.     See  Justin 
"  Martyrs,"   290  ;     their   power  to 
absolve,    97,    293,    295  ;    made 
Elders,  247 
Martyrs  of  Lyons,  95  h,  296 
Mary,  mother  of  John  Mark,  41 
Massebieau,  112  n 
Mater  Synagogae,  131  «. 
jxaO'qraL,  9,  113  n 
Matthias,  32,  77 
Mau,  Auguste,  341  n 
Meals,  Common,  51,  53  w,  255/ 
Meetings   of    whole    Church.     See 

Congregational   Meeting 
Membership    of    the    Church,    the 

seat  of  authority,  32,  121,  309 
Messiahship  without  suffering,  6  n 


INDEX 


393 


"  Metropolitans,"  336,  350,  352 

IMilton,  154  ?i 

Ministry,  use  of  word,  62  n  ;  based 
on  "  gifts,"  63  /,  70  /,  75,  85,  99, 
113,  151,  235,  248  ;  two  different 
kinds  of,  63  n,  65  /,  149,  228,  272  ; 
the  local  ministry  created  by  the 
Churches,  113-166;  changed  in 
second  century,  169/,  205^; 
became  a  lordship  in  the  third 
century,  266/7,  276^,  303/7; 
modelled  on  pagan  hierarchy, 
356  ;  "  from  above,"  25  /,  121, 
235  ;  not  a  plastic  medium 
between  God  and  His  people  25  n ; 
included  from  the  first  oversight 
and  subordinate  service,  154, 
169  ;  of  women,  181,  249.  See 
Bishop,  Elder,  Deacon,  Minor 
Orders,  yu/3epi/7/crei?,  Priesthood, 
Prophetic  Ministry 

Minor  Orders,  246,  340  ;  modelled 
on  pagan  priesthood,  354  / ; 
absorbed  remains  of  prophetic 
ministry,  354  >i 

Missa  catechumenorum,  Missa  fide- 
lium,  355 

]\Iissionary  analogies  in  organiza- 
tion, 41,  106  H,  117,  121,  140  H, 
144,  254  n,  256  n,  258 

Mommsen,  Theod,,  127  n,  229  n, 
335  n,  343  n,  353 

Monceaux,  P.,  351 

Montanus,  236  / ;  Montanism, 
wider  and  narrower,  236  ff ; 
Phrygian,  had  new  elements, 
237  ;  movement  conservative, 
235/7;  divided  the  Church, 
271  ;  Montanist  Prophecy,  239, 
271  /  ;  persecuted  by  Cliristian 
Emperors,  243,  360 

Monthly  payments  to  the  clergy, 
304  ;   in  confraternities,  125,  202 

Moses'  seat,  27 

Mosheim,  J.  L.,  90  n,  162  n 

Mother  Church  (  of  Jerusalem),  20, 
118,  153;  337 


Mowat,  R.,  341  n 
Municipal  Priests,  349/ 
Muratorian  Fragment,  140 
"  Mysteries,"    104  ;    Pagan    Mys- 
teries, 308 

Names  given  to  Christians,  113  ?i  / 

Naturahst  Rehgions,  100 

Nazareth,  75  n 

Neale,  J.  M.,  43  » 

Nestorians,  85  n 

Nicopolis,  142 

vov6€TovvT&<;^  ot,  61  n 

Novatian,  331,  359 

Nurses  in  Christian  communities, 

181,  249  / 
Nymphas,  42  n 

Obedience  to  ecclesiastical  au- 
thority, 24/,  60,  09,  193,  197, 
265  /,  277  ;  by  behevers  to  each 
other,  191 

Oblations.     See  Offerings 

Octavius.     See  Augustus 

Offences  and  offenders  within  the 
Church,  27,  175 

Offerings,  34,  174,  181,  201,  209, 
254  ff,  211,  309 

Office  -  bearers  were  frequently 
prophets,  66,  209,  217  ;  taught 
from  the  first,  155  n,  216  ;  obedi- 
ence due  to  them,  60,  etc  ;  earliest, 
were  the  first  converts,  60,  122  /, 
152 ;  existed  in  the  Pauline 
Churches,    60  ff.     See   Ministry 

Old  Testament  Scriptures,  46 ; 
prophecy,  100  ;  priesthood,  196, 
307,  334 

Orders,  25  n,  32 

Ordo  et  Plebs,  245  n 

Ordination,  246  ff  ;  of  bishops, 
246,  302  n,  330  ;  of  elders, 
248  ;  of  presbyterian  ministers, 
330  n  ;  the  entrance  to  ecclesias- 
tical office,  302 

Organization,  of  confraternities, 
125  /  ;    of  Synagogues,  129  /  ;  of 


394 


INDEX 


the  Pagan  State  Religion,  348  ; 
copied  by  the  Church,  350,  355  /  ; 
of  the  Churches,  113  /^  ;  several 
roots,  115/7;  followed  a  course 
of  its  own,  128 ;  in  Pauline 
Churches,  136  ^  ;  in  Pastoral 
Epistles,  144  /  ;  passed  through 
several  stages,  149  /,  155  /,  169  ff, 
183,  350  /  ;  two  ideals  in,  335  /  ; 
social,  dreaded  by  Roman  Em- 
perors, 132  / 
Organism,  the  Church  an,  8,  15,  51 
Origen,  on  Celsus'  account  of  Chris- 
tian prophets',  109  h  ;  15,  79  n 
Ostiarii,  355 

Paganism,  intellectual,  217  / 
Palestine,   the  home  of  prophecy, 

91  ;    Churches  in,  118 
Pamphylia,  98 
Paraphrases,  Scotch,  45  / 
Pardon   may   not   be   granted   for 
some  sins,   96/,   213,   267,   272, 
295,  297  n  ;    but  may  if  prophet 
or  Martyr  demands  it,  97,  268, 
272,  295  ;   if  bishop  remitted  the 
sin,  265,  272/,  276  n,  300,  303, 
306  ;   28,  29  n 
Parish  system,  beginning  of,  339 
ParoicUa,  326,  332 
Pastoral    Epistles,     139  ff,     139  ?;, 
202  n,     216  ;      and    sources     of 
Apostolic  Canons,  148  ??. 
Pastors,  8,  65,   152 ;    synonymous 

with  Bishops,  178,  330  n 
Patron   and   CUent,    123  /,    124  ?i  ; 
in     Confraternities     and     Syna- 
gogues, 124  n,  126,  131  n 
"  Pattern  of  Teaching,"  105 
Paul,  St.,  use  of  the  word  Church, 
3w,  5,  10,   18;    fellowship,  T  ff, 
20  fj,  271  ;  grouped  his  Churches, 
2\  ff ;     method    of    making    the 
unity     of     the    Church    visible, 
22 ff;    call  and  preparation,  77; 
the  typical  Apostle,  88  ;   attacked 
in  the  Pseudo-Clementines,  78  ; 


apostolic  career  began  at  Anti- 
och,  92  n  ;  v/hat  makes  a  Church, 
49,  69,  121,  149  ;    cultivated  the 
sense    of    responsibility    in    his 
Churches,  48/,  58/7, 148';  thought 
highly  of  prophecy,  61  ;  Z\n,  32/, 
41  n,   44  ?i,  46  ?i,  58/,  70,   11  ff, 
HI  n,  88,  93/,  98,  102,  113,  118, 
141 71, 143  n,  154  n,  172  n,  214,  etc. 
Paul  of  Samosata,  332  / 
Pearson,  John,  284  n 
Peloponnesus,  85  n 
Penitence,  alteration  in  conditions 
of,  273  ff  ;  how  to  be  shown,  297, 
310/ 
Pergamos,  a  centre  for  the  Imperial 

Cult,  348  ;    Church  in,  22 
Peter,  St.,  the  Rock-man,  6  n  ;   his 
confession,  6,  25  ff  ;   at  the  head 
of  the  Church  in  Jerusalem,  119 
Peter,  Epistle  of,  10  h,  137 
Phanar,  The,  111  n 
Pharisees,  27 

Philadelphia,   The  Church  at,   22, 
27,  236  ;    Ignatius  had  the  j)ro- 
phetic  afflatus  in,  189  n 
Philemon,  42  n 

Phihp,  one  of  the  "  Seven,"  24,  117 
Philip,  daughters  of,  prophetesses, 

91,  236 
Phihp  of  Side,  120  n 
PhiUppi,  The  Church  at,  36  n,  136, 

194 
Phoebe  of  Cenchrea,  a  "  patroness," 

124/1 
Pisidia,  98 
TTLcrrL?,  48  K,  71  ii 
Pistis  Sophia,  The,  222  n 
Plebs  et  Ordo,  245  n 
"  Plastic  Medium,"  A  special  priest- 
hood a,  25  n,  35 
Platonic  exegesis,  221 
Pliny's     Letters     to     Trajan,     45, 

60  n,  124  Ji,  128  ?i,  135  ?i. 
Plumptre,  B.,  107  n 
Plutarch,  123  n 
TTvevfiaTiKoly  oij  69 


INDEX 


395 


TTOifjLi'Loi',  36,  115,  155  n,  183 

Poiycarp,  a  prophet,  63,  194,  199, 
236 

Pont  if  ex  Maximus,  the  official 
head  of  the  Pagan  State  Religion, 
349  ;  the  Bishop  of  the  Roman 
Church,  335,  351 

Pontius,  286  n,  287 

Poor,  care  of  the,  21,  115/,  148, 
255  /  ;   Cliurch  poor-roll,  148 

Poverty  in  Roman  Empire,  116  u 

Praise  in  PubUc  Worship,  44,  251  ; 
a  sacrifice,  34,  307 

Prayer  in  Public  Worship,  44, 52  and 
n  ;  the  Lord's  Prayer,  44  n  ; 
ejaculatory  prayers,  47  /  ;  litur- 
gic  prayers,  52  n,  174,  246 ; 
Pi'ayer  of  consecration  at  Eu- 
charist spontaneous,  201,  253  n  ; 
prayers  of  prophets,  spontaneous, 
95 

Preaching  Ministry  of  ApostoHc 
Church,  72 

Preparation  of  Apostles,  70,  84 

Presbyters.     See  Elders 

Trpecr/Svrepa,  131  ?i 

7rp€(r/3vT£f)OL,   118,    159,   161  ff 

Presbyterian  system  of  Church 
government,  has  the  threefold 
ministry,  170  w, ;  close  resemblance 
to  what  is  found  in  Ignatius,  198, 
205  ;  where  it  differs  from  early 
organization,  259  ;  330  n 

Presbyterium,  196,  198  n 

President  (Trpoeo-Tojs),  173  n,  208  ; 
52 

Prisca,  42  n 

Priests,  N.T.,  34  /,  307,  309  ;  hmited 
to  bishops,  305,  309  ;  of  Roman 
State  paganism,  349  ff,  354  ;  of 
proAunces,  349,  351  ;  of  towais, 
350  ;    Christian  imitation,  355  / 

Proclamation  about  sins  of  the 
Flesh,  274,  276  n 

Trp6i(TTa.p.(.voi,  TrpoetTTo)^,  irpocrTaTis, 
irpoa-TiLTq^,  61  n,  72  )!,  123,  150, 
155  n,  192  n 


Promise  of  the  Church,  25 ;  of 
authority,  28  /,  274.  303,  317 

TTpovoilaOaL,  185,  180  ii  | 

Prophecy,  N.T.,  61,  00  ff ;  ecsta- 
tic and  non-ecstatic,  94,  241  ; 
compared  with  O.T.,  107  ;  de- 
spisers  of,  debarred  from  the 
Eucharist,  233  ;  in  Asia,  236  ; 
Montanist,  94,  239  / 

Prophetic  Ministry,  69  ff  ;  Three- 
fold division  in,  73 ;  passed 
away,  109,  213  ff,  244,  272  ;  in 
the  Didache,  172  / ;  its  duties 
undertaken  by  local  ministry 
215,  229 ;  Charisma  of,  sup- 
posed to  belong  to  office-bearers, 
228  ;  deterioration  of,  108,  233  ; 
v/as  "  from  above,"  235  ;  main- 
tained liy  the  Montanists,  271 

Prophet,  Clu-istian,  uses  of  the 
word,  92  ;  was  the  messenger  of 
God,  95;  influence,  96/;  61, 
71  /,  192,  241 

Prophets,  Christian,  46,  65,  73  ; 
presence  universal,  90  /  ;  names 
of,  91,  189  n,  236,  313  n,  328  ; 
were  teachers,  93  ;  wandering, 
98  ;  received  the  firstfruits,  09, 
175  /  ;  not  office-bearers,  but 
might  be,  66,  96  ;  controlled  by 
the  "  gift  of  discernment,"  92, 
102,  175;  controlled  by  office- 
bearers, 216  n,  235,  238,  298; 
false,  100,  174,  234;  tests  of, 
102,  213,  272;  could  pardon 
sins,  97,  268,  272,  295  ;  active 
in  great  cities,  101  ;  caricatured 
by  Celsus,  109  n 

Prophetesses,  91,  236,  240 

Punchayat,  Hindu,  117 

Quadratus,  236 

Quahfications       of      office-bearers, 

145  /,  178  ff,  247  / 
Quarrels  among  the  Brethren,  56, 

175/ 
Rackham,  R.  B.,  203  n 


396 


INDEX 


Ramsay,  W.  M.,  12  w,  23  h,  92  n, 

134  71,  204  n,  207,  229  n,  341  n 

"Readers,"  read  the  scriptures  and 

preached,  182  /,  253  ;    46 
Reformation,  The,  72,  205 
Rdigio  licita,  125,  129  /,  133 
Religions  losing  their  power,  92 
Renan,  E.,  127  n,  128,  239  n 
Representative  principle  in  Chris- 
tian organization,  23,   115,   118, 
146,  150  /,  175, 178,  305,  316,  334 
Responsibility     imposed     by     the 

Apostles,  33,  89,  118,  148 
Rethberg,  283  n 
Revivals  and  Prophecy,  72 
Reville,    J.,    127  n,    141  n,    195  n, 

196  ?i 
Riedel,  W.,  203  n,  245  »,  256  n 
Ritschl,  Alb.,  94  n,  116  h,  169,  239, 

283  » 
Ritschl,  Otto,  283  n,  291  n,  292  n, 

318  n 
Roads,  Imperial,  22,  100,  336 
Robinson,    Dean    A.,    75  n,  85  n, 

90  «, 
Roma,  the  goddess,  343  /,  344  n 
Rome,   the  Church  in,   early  pi'e- 
eminence,     318,     323  ;      size    in 
third  century,  338  ;    the  sins  of 
the   flesh;   275 ;     Apostolic   suc- 
cession, 280  ;    Jews  in,  129  ;    7, 
23,  42,  59,^89,  93,  101,  123,  228, 
335,  351 
Roman,     Africans,    285 ;    lists    of 
bishops,  281  Ji ;  law  and  Christian 
thought,    278  ;      Lawyers,    278, 
298,   301,   309;    State  Religion, 
343/7;     Captivity   of   St.    Paul, 
10,  12,  23,  150  ;    Elders  and  the 
Lapsed,  291  / 
Rossi,  Com.  de.       See  De  Rossi 
Ruinart,  187  n 


Sacerdotahsm,     33  ff,     37  n,     196, 

307/,  357 
Sacrificati,  288,  289  n,  312  n 


Sacrifice,  Christian,  34,  307  / 
Saints,  114  n 

Salmon,  George,  238,  240  n 
Sanday,    W.,     14  ?^,   139  n,    152  n, 

176  n,  111  n,  204  n,  215  n,  260  n 
Schmiedel,  P.  W.,  3  n,  75  n,  81  n, 

89  w,  117  ri,  127  n,  128  ?i,  135  », 

150  n,  152  n 
Scliola,  126  ;   41 
Schoolmasters     in     pagan     lands, 

106  ?i 
Scotch  paraphrases,  45  and  n 
Schultze,  135  /?. 
Schurer,     E.,    4  n,     117  h,    124  n, 

130  n,  132  n 
(re/So/xevoL,  ol,  123  )i 
"  Secret  Doctrine,"  222 
Secularize  the  Church,   movement 

to,  238,  273 
Self-government  in  the   Churches, 

32  /,  55,  58,  99,  156 
Selwyn,  90  n 
"  Sent  Ones,"  5,  75  » 
Service,    gifts    and    rule,    64,    113, 

151  ;   of  Tables,  115 

Services  necessary  for  a  com- 
munity, 122 ;  crystalUze  into 
office,  149 

Seufert,  75  n,  76  ii 

"Seven,"  The,  115/,  139  ?^ 

"  Signs  of  an  Apostle,"  83 

Silas,  79,  80,  91,  143  n,  328 

Sins  not  to  be  pardoned,  213,  267, 
272  n,  273  / 

Smith,  G.  A.,  4  }i 

Smyrna,  The  Church  at,  22,  100 

Socrates  (historian),  203  n 

Sohm,  Rudolf,  4  n,  70  7i,  71  n,  75  n, 
80  n,  81  n,  91  n,  208  n,  296  n  ; 
Theory  of  Synods,  327  ff 

Soldiers  and  the  Church,  232 

Soter  (Esculapius).  217 

Sozomen,  203  n,  243 

"  Speaking  the  Word  of  God,"  65, 
72 

"  Speciahzed  Gifts,"  70 

Spence,  Canon,  172  n 


INDEX 


397 


Spirit  of  Christ,  8.    See  Fruits  of 

the  Spirit 
Spiritual  sacrifices,  34,  307  ;    men 

69,  272  n 
Stephen  of  Rome,  317  n,  318  n 
Succession,  historical,   in  manifes- 
tation of  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit, 
19  /  ;    in  the  continuance  of  cir- 
cumcision, 18  ;    in  rulers  of  the 
kinsmen    of    Jesus,     119/;      in 
generations  of  office-bearers,  225, 
227  ;    of  bishops  succeeding  by 
vicarious    ordination,    226,    270, 
311/7 
Suetonius,  132  n,  133  yi,  344  n,  345  n 
crvyyv(i)/xr},  88  n 
Summus  sacerdos,  306  n 
Supper,  The  Lord's.     See  Eucharist 
Symeon  Niger,  a  prophet,  91  ;  son 

of  Clopas,  120 
Synagogue,  use  of  word,  4  n ; 
Christian  Church,  114.  ^See  Jew- 
ish Synagogue 
S3mod,  grouped  Churches,  324  /, 
328  ;  ordination  of  bishop,  327  /  ; 
and  congregational  meetings, 
328,  333,  334  ;  met  in  Provincial 
capitals,  336,  353 ;  Sohm's  theory, 
327  / ;  Synods  in  Africa,  326  ; 
Ancyra,  325,  328  ;  Aries,  329  n  ; 
Antioch,  328,  332;  Carthage, 
286,  316  ;  Corinth,  328  ;  Bostra, 
332  ;  Greece,  326  ;  Rome,  331  ; 
Nice,  329  ?i ;  the  laity  at  Synods, 
316  n,  331 

"  Table  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of 
the  Lord,"  257 

"  Tables,"  service  of,  60  n,  115 

Talmud,  117  n 

Tatian,  105,  230  / 

Teachers,  8,  73,  92,  103  ff  ;  office- 
bearers were,  216;  113  >i 

Temples  for  the  worship  of  the 
Imperial  Cult,  3,  342  / ;  priests 
in  State,  354 

Temptation,  The,  7 


Tipfxa  T^s  Bvcrew;  141  n 
Tertulhan,  15,  36  n,  47  n,  65,  76  n, 

80  n,    97,    106 »,    115  n,    129  71, 

134  71,  172,  201,  208  n,  221,  225, 

227  71,  228  71,  230,  238,  240,  245  n, 

267  «,    268  7t,    274,    297,    298  n, 

300  H,  308  / 
Testamentu7n  Jesu  Christi,  233 
Testuig  the  Prophetic  Ministry,  70, 

71  H,  99  ff,  175, 213 
TeTi/xfj/xivoi,  70  n,  105 
Timothy,  74,  79,  143 
Tlianksgi\'ing.     See  Eucharist 
Theocracy,  the  Church  is  a,  4,  25, 

33,  177 
Tliessalonica,  The  Church  at,  11,  22, 

60,  61,  63,  91,  93,  101,  123 
^iao-09,  6ia(rap^r}<i,   129  n 
Thomas  Aquinas,  205 
Tlireefold  ministry,  not  Episcopacy, 

170  /  ;  how  it  arose,  207  ;  earhest 

m  Asia,  236;  195,259 
"  Three  Men,"  28,  179  n,  327 
Thurificuti,  288 
©vcnaaTripiov  ©eoVj  of  the  poor,  115 

n;  208 
Thyatira,  22,  100 
"  Tongue,  speaking  in  a,"  47  n 
Town  Council  ruled  the  world,  a, 

324 

virypirr]';^  131 

"  Unified  Church,"  12  n 

Uniformity  of  organization,  not 
necessary,  24,  60 

Union  with  Christ,  7,  189,  190  ff 

Unity  of  the  Church,  10  ff,  24; 
manifested  in  the  gifts  of  the 
Spirit,  20/;  by  fraternal  inter- 
course, 55,  156  ;  made  visible  by 
councils,  313  / ;  by  papal  supre- 
macy, 317  /  ;    dogmatic,  229 

Universal  Church  visible,  16,  19/, 
58,  172,  182;  the  Prophetic 
Church  belonged  to,  the  73; 
shown  in  orchnation,  329,  331  ?i 
never  expressed  in  a  poUty,  359  / 


398 


INDEX 


Ussher,  Archbishop,  187  n 

Vestments.     See  Dress 

Victor  of  Rome,  15,  317  n 

Villages,  Mission  to  the,  31  ;  Chris- 
tians in,  106  n,  289  n 

"  Virgins,"  249 

Visible  Qiurch,  }6  ft,  57,  172,  182, 
191,  313/,  329,  335  w 

Visions,  77  ;  and  Prophecy,  92,  91, 
143  n  ;  in  the  Apocalypse,  94  ; 
in  Hermas,  95  ;  Cyprian's,  95  n, 
284  n,  313  n 

Vitringa,  131  n 

Voigt,  239  n 

Voss,  187  n 

Voting  at  Congregational  meetings, 
33,55 


Wandering    preachers,    73 ; 
phets,  98  ;    teachers,  105 
Wansleben,  256  n 
"Way,  those  of  the,"  ]14?i 
Vv^einel,  90  n,  100  n 
Weingarten,  127  w,  128 


pro- 


Weizsacker,  5n,  9  n,  23  n,  44  w, 
47  n,  57  n,  75  n,  81  7i,  83  n,  89  n, 
lUn 

Westcott,  Bishop,  29  n 

"  Widows,"  to  pray  for  the  Brother- 
hood, 183,  249;  Suppers  for, 
256;   181/ 

"  Wise  Men,"  57,  176,  182 

V/issowa,  4  n,  101  n,  341  n 

"  Witness  of  the  spirit,"  72.  See 
Discernment,  "  Gifts  " 

Women  prophesied,  44,  91,  182, 
236,  240;  ministry  of,  147, 181  /, 
249 

Worship,  Christiaji,  44/7,  250  ff ; 
of  the  Emperors,  in  Palestine, 
3 ;  in  Rome  and  in  the  Pro- 
vinces, 342  ff ;   popularity  of,  347 

Zahn,  172  re,  187  re,  198  n 
Zenobia,  Queen,  333  n 
Zephja-inus  of  Rome,  129  re,  135  w, 

274  71 
Ziebarth,  127  re,  129  n 
Zoker  and  James,  120 
Zoticus  Otrenus,  328 


Butler  &=  Tanner  The  Sehvood  Printing  Works  Frome  and  London 


PRINTED  IN  U.S    A.      L' 


>"}' 


